Although Drupal contains features on its own to allow you to manage and present content to your website visitors, there may be website functions you’d like that it can’t do on its own. For example, maybe you want your website to integrate with a particular external database, or you want to change the styling of the administration menu. To do these things, Drupal uses modules.

A Drupal module is an extension or plugin that adds features to your website.

Modules can either be included in Drupal itself (these modules are known as core modules) or can be separately created and added to your website (contributed: also known as contrib modules). You can visit the Modules page on Drupal.org for a list of contributed modules you can add to your website.

Even though your website may include many installed core and contributed modules, you can control which modules are actively in use by enabling or disabling the modules on the Modules page (accessed by clicking Modules in the administrative toolbar in Drupal.)

For information about installing modules, see the Installing modules and themes page on Drupal.org.

Module definition