Drupal 7 Media Module is Must-Have

The Punch Line

Drupal 7 will ship with improved file and media handling built in. But the add-on Media Module is highly recommended for creating a truly user-friendly experience that allows content authors to add images, audio and video.

The Setup

Drupal 7 provides file support built into core that is significantly rewritten and improved since Drupal 6. Version 7 uses PHP stream wrappers so that files can be stored locally or managed in remote environments, such as YouTube videos or Flickr images. The security for public and private files has been fixed (it never really worked in Drupal 6).

Files have also become first-class Entities in Drupal 7, giving them a much more robust API. There is even built-in thumbnail creation and "image styles", meaning preset sizes (such as thumbnail, small, large).

Despite all that, image and media handling in Drupal 7 core is not good enough on its own. There is no integration with WYSIWYG editors, where many authors would naturally upload their images or drop in their YouTube videos. There is also no display or players for common audio and video formats.

The Media Module for Drupal 7 fills this need. It provides an easy-to-use, WYSIWYG-integrated experience for adding any media -- images, audio, video or otherwise. It provides a Media Library that is easy to manage.

Media Module also creates one common interface and framework for multiple file types. It makes it easy to add in support for many different formats and embedded players without needing to write a totally separate module and create a whole new user interface for each kind.

Some of the creators of the Media Module showed off their latest work at DrupalCon 2010. The latest versions of the Media Module and Drupal 7, both still in active development, show that it is becoming a solid solution. It works great with the WYSIWYG module and CKeditor. The user experience -- though still in need of some help text and polish -- appears to be a simple, clean and consistent approach for content authors to upload media and manage their media library.

We expect the Media Module, along with WYSIWYG and CKeditor, will become the de facto standard in Drupal 7. It is highly recommended for anyone building a new Drupal 7 site or upgrading to Drupal 7. Drupal 7 and Media Module are expected to be released before the end of 2010.

To see a demo or learn more, see the full session video online at http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/media-module-multimedia-dru....