Drupal is an awesome content management system, but in Drupal version 6 one thing that makes it difficult for beginners is that it’s necessary to install and understand quite a large number of modules in order to get the best out of the system. Drupal 7 (when it’s available) dramatically reduces this need, but in the mean time, here is my list of top Drupal modules that I use to build sites.
I generally install the following modules on most sites, but the ones marked with an “*” I consider to be absolutely essential.
Modules can be researched and downloaded here: http://drupal.org/project/usage
Enjoy
acl
*admin_menu
advanced_forum
advanced_forum_more_styles
advanced_help
amazon
author_pane
backup_migrate
backup_migrate_files
calendar
*cck
*cck_time
*ckeditor
*comment_notify
*commentrss
*contemplate
*content_access
*ctools
*date
elysia_cron
*faq
*fckeditor
*filefield
gmap
*google_analytics
*image
*imageapi
*imagecache
*imagefield
*img_assist
*jquery_ui
lazyreg
*lightbox2
*locale
login_destination
mass_contact
menu_per_role
*nice_menus
nodeasblock
*node_clone
panels
*pathauto
stringoverrides
*taxonomy_image
*taxonomy_manager
*taxonomy_menu
*token
transliteration
twitter
typekit
*ubercart
*views
*views_bulk_operations
*views_customfield
*xmlsitemap