By Michael Ross

This article was published in the print magazine Drupal Watchdog, Volume 3 Issue 1, 2013-04, on page 12, by Tag1 Publishing. The magazine was distributed at Drupalcon Portland, 2013-05-20. The article was also published on their website.

Drupal 7 introduced four new modules intended to improve the user interface, primarily for administrators: Dashboard (a customizable page containing administrative blocks for monitoring the website), Overlay (which displays administrative pages in a smaller, modal window), Shortcut (a customizable toolbar of links, e.g., "Add content"), and Toolbar (an administrator toolbar that lacks some features of the Administration menu module, including drop-down menus). These new modules are enabled by default in the "standard" installation profile, and can clutter up your interface. Consider disabling them, and adding the Administration menu.

Figure 1. Admin interface dashboard

Copyright © 2012 Michael J. Ross. All rights reserved.