Closing out the year 2012 with a bang, December brought us quite a number of new modules which look promising enough to cover; a few that I’m covering this time are far from ready or even only at the “concept” stage and normally would not be included, but they seemed particularly interesting or unique, and I want to see how they develop. Anyway, this month there were quite a few modules released for mobile support/responsive content. There were also several search-related modules, anti-spam modules, a couple of novelty modules, some interesting commerce-related releases, a number of Features package modules customized for various special-purpose distributions, lots of new “Third-party Integration” modules, theme enhancements, and more… I only wish I had more time so I could actually try out more of them, but there are several I do plan to get back to.
As usual, this post is sorted alphabetically and only covers modules which had their first release, or at least a new project created, in December. Selection for the Modules of the Month is a completely arbitrary process, but normally excludes common or niche items like a new payment method for Commerce that provides connections for a payment system used in, e.g. Romania. We also don’t normally include commercial service integration modules (unless the service looks really cool and is reasonably priced).
Anyway, it seems like only last week that I was putting the final touches on the November “Modules of the Month” story… oh wait, it was only last week: nine days ago, as I write this. Well I promised to try to get December’s published in early January, so I pushed some days around to make this happen. Let’s take a look at the modules, then, shall we? …
Activation Code
Categories: Developer , Examples , User Access & Authentication , Utility
The Activation Code module, brought to us by prolific über-contributor Bryan Ollendyke of Penn State University , provides a fieldable “activation_code” entity Course Information System distribution as another method for authorizing access to online course materials, etc, but for those who don’t need the module on their site, it could still provide a useful example for how to build a fieldable entity.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Apachesolr Link
Categories: Search
The Apachesolr Link module, produced by Michael Prasuhn of Shomeya , enables indexing a Link field’s “target”, along with the entity it is attached to, in the Apache Solr search index. It might be obvious, but this module depends on Link and Apache Solr Search Integration ; the Apache Solr Attachments module will also be useful if some of the links you wish to index are to PDF files or other “non-plain-text” results which you wish to index.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Are You A Human PlayThru
Categories: Spam Prevention , User Access & Authentication
The Are You A Human PlayThru module, written by Chris Keller of Commercial Progression , provides a more simple, fun, and intuitive means for a user to prove they are human than typical CAPTCHA options. It uses game mechanics which a user interacts with rather than having users try to interpret text in graphics. CAPTCHA fields can be frustratingly and tedious, so it’s nice to see people are working on interesting alternatives. Cool! I often skip over commercial third-party integration modules, but this seems interesting enough not to pass up, and they do provide free options which might be adequate for many sites.
Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.
Backstretch Formatter
Categories: Content Display , Third-party Integration
The Backstretch Formatter module, written by Yannick Leyendecker of LOOM GmbH , provides a field formatter for jQuery Backstretch - A simple jQuery plugin that allows you to add a dynamically-resized, slideshow-capable background image to any page or element. Once you have everything (JavaScript libraries and the module, etc) correctly installed, if you select “Backstretch” as field formatter for an image field which allows more than one image you will get a slideshow. If your slideshow needs don’t require anything too fancy, this could be the ideal module to implement it. Cool!
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Badbot
Categories: Administration , Spam Prevention , User Access & Authentication
Because we wouldn’t want one CAPTCHA alternative to be lonely… the Badbot module, developed by Yuriy Babenko of Suite101, provides another method of CAPTCHA-free spam-prevention; it is currently limited to the user registration form, but comment forms are in the works. Visitors must have JavaScript enabled in their browsers for this system to work; it displays an error if JavaScript is disabled. Since spam bots generally do not parse JS, this helps avoid the need for CAPTCHAs, which are often solved by low-paid workers these days, anyway.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
BetterTip Breakpoint Panels
Categories: Content Display , Mobile
The Breakpoint Panels module, developed by Daniel Linn of Metal Toad Media , adds a Panel style called “Breakpoint Panel”. When selected, it will display checkboxes next to all of the breakpoints specified in that module’s UI. Unchecking any of these will “hide” it from that breakpoint. If you are lost by this description of the functionality, it probably helps to understand that “breakpoints” define different display-width ranges so that you can determine layout for content on different width devices or even eliminate some content from being displayed on, e.g. devices less than 480 pixels wide. Of course it depends on the Breakpoints module, whose functionality is going into Drupal 8 “core”, and Panels , but you’ll also need to download some Javascript files and enable them with Libraries . See the project page for further details, but this could definitely help improve mobile/responsive content and the roadmap looks good, too.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Christmas Lights
Categories: Games and Amusements , Novelty
The Christmas Lights module, created by Andrew Podlubnyj , is, depending on your use case, of course, probably just a novelty module, but one that might be fun to enable in the right season. It adds decorative “Christmas lights” for you and your users to enjoy.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
CKEditor for WYSIWYG Module
Categories: Content , Third-party Integration
When Nathan Haug of Lullabot -fame releases a new module, it’s always GoodStuff™, so it’s no surprise that there are already hundreds of sites using the CKEditor for WYSIWYG Module after just one month. It provides a WYSIWYG editor (surprise, surprise!) using the CKEditor library (surprise, again!). This project aims to combine some of the best of the Wysiwyg-module integration with CKEditor with the best of the standalone CKEditor-integration module, with support for the Drupal Image and Drupal Image captioning plugins, compatibility with other WYSIWYG editors integrated through the Wysiwyg module, and no inline styles inserted into HTML… among other nice features either already implemented or in the “roadmap”. It requires the Wysiwyg module and is incompatible with the normal CKEditor integration module (which must be completely removed before using this module).
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Coins wallet
Categories: E-commerce , Third-party Integration
The Coins wallet module, authored by ssm2017 Binder , is a Bitcoin wallet system to be used with a devcoin -compatible daemon. This module is a complete rewrite for Drupal 7 of the never-released original Drupal 6 version discussed here and uses the bitcoin-php library. While I confess that I’m a bit leery of how this all works, I’m also fascinated by the idea of alternative currencies which aren’t controlled and manipulated by bankers and other “white collar criminals”, so while the optimist in me is curious to see how this works, the pessimist in me worries that between human greed and governmental attempts to rein this in, well… interesting work, in any case.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Collapsible fieldset memory
Categories: Administration , Content , Content Display , Site Navigation , Utility
The Collapsible fieldset memory module, written by David Herminghaus , solves a nice little UX issue for Drupal. If you have ever worked on a project where you had to enter content into Drupal forms with fieldsets which needed to be uncollapsed to access required fields, or where closing fieldsets to get them out of your way is part of your workflow, you might like this module. It allows everyone, even anonymous users, to have stored defaults for any Drupal form with collapsible fieldsets, so if a fieldset on a form was uncollapsed when you last used it, it will start out that way the next time you do. Nice! Of course it requires Javascript (as do collapsible fieldsets). The developer is open to feature requests and issues, so pitch in if you use this module and help make it better. There’s a bit you should know about before implementing it on your site, so be sure to peruse the project page.
Status: There are alpha releases available for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.
Commerce Check Commerce Message
Categories: E-commerce
The Commerce Message module, produced by Bojan Živanović of Commerce Guys , provides Commerce -specific Message integration, including some default message settings for common order states, such as “order paid”, “product added to cart”, “order confirmation”, etc. It looks like a pretty well-thought-out module to help provide automated or custom messages to clients at appropriate stages in their order process. It’s integrated with Commerce Backoffice and Commerce Kickstart v2, so is already in use on quite a number of sites.
Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.
Commons Polls Commons Tooling
Categories: Community , Developer
The Commons Tooling module, is another contribution by Acquia’s Ezra Barnett Gildesgame ; it’s a toolkit for setting up a Commons testing environment and then running tests on it.
Status: There is no release, yet, per se , but there is a repository you can clone (still only “master” branch).
Content callback
Categories: Content , Developer
If you register a content callback via hook_content_callback_info() it will be available in the Content callback field options.
—Project description excerpt
The Content callback module, developed by Jasper Knops of Nascom , allows you to return any renderable array, created in code, via a field; it also contains a sub-module which provides a searchable Views display, as well as a context condition, among other features you should check out on the project page. If it’s not clear, though, I might mention this is not a simple add-and-enable module; it provides some tools for coders and advanced site builders.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Context Breakpoint
Categories: Content Display , Theme Enhancements
The Context Breakpoint module, developed by Christoph , helps bridge Context and Breakpoints so that you can alter a page based on the visitor’s screen resolution, browser window size, or aspect ratio. Installing it adds a context condition for “Breakpoint”. This could definitely be useful, especially if your site already uses Context. Of course it’s a bit complex, so please see the project page and the module’s README file for information about how to install, configure, and make use of this.
Status: There is an alpha release available for Drupal 7.
Context code
Categories: Developer
The Context code is another module by Jasper Knops of Nascom. It provides “a new context condition plugin which allows you to trigger contexts from code”. It should probably go without saying that it requires the Context module and is a module developed for other developers. See the project page for implementation examples, but I think this looks very useful, at least for advanced Drupalists and coders.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
CP2P2: Content Profile to Profile2 Create and continue Crossdomain
Categories: Media
The Crossdomain module, written by Adam Moore of Stanford Graduate School of Business, simply creates a crossdomain.xml file at the root of your Drupal site and provides configuration setting for which domains should be included. This is useful for certain web services which may require different domains to have access to your site content.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Currency for Drupal Commerce Field Quick Required
Categories: Administration , Fields
The Field Quick Required module, written by Jelle Sebreghts of attiks, provides a simple overview of which field are required for a given content type, without having to enter the settings for that field. You can also change the “required” setting for any field. Nice! It does this by adding an extra column to the “manage fields” overview for your content types, e.g. for /admin/structure/types/manage/article/fields, where you would normally have columns for “Label”, “Machine name”, “Field type”, “Widget”, and “Operations”, you would also have a column labeled “Required” with a checkbox that can easily be changed if you decide a certain field should (or should not) be required for a particular content type. This could be especially useful during the initial phases of designing a site’s content types and logic.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
"File Metadata Table" Field Formatter
Categories: Fields
The "File Metadata Table" Field Formatter module, written by Jeremy Thorson , with support from Derek Wright , looks interesting. It’s still in development, but it provides a customizable “File Metadata Table” field formatter for file fields. All of the options are a bit much to list here, but given the profiles of these two super-contributors, I think this will be an interesting module to check back on. I’m expecting something awesome here!
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Foresight Images
Categories: Mobile , Third-party Integration
The Foresight Images module, developed by Graham Bates of Catch Digital , provides a field formatter which integrates the foresight.js library to display image fields. Images are requested and generated at the exact size required. As with other such third-party Javascript library integrations, this will require Libraries and you install the additional JavaScript code in sites/all/libraries. I’m not convinced that this module offers enough benefits to select it rather than one of the other more-established responsive image modules; I’m also not convinced otherwise and the Foresight Images project page includes a list of other “similar” responsive images modules and some brief notes about how the approach or features differ from those provided by Foresight Images. So this project page could be worth looking at if you need an overview to help choose the appropriate module(s) or approach for your next project.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Forum notifications
Categories: Community
The Forum notifications module, created by David Snopek , extends the Notifications module to add some nice UI improvements for notifications involving forums based on the “core” Forums module. If you have a site with forums and wish to have a nice user experience for “subscribing” (and “unsubscribing”) to forums or individual threads, this module could help.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7 and a beta release available for Drupal 6.
htaccess
Categories: Administration
The htaccess module, coded by giorgio79 , autogenerates a Drupal root htaccess file based on your settings, including such configuration settings as automatic insertion of Boost htaccess settings, whether or not to use “www”, Followsymlinks or SymlinksIfOwnersMatch, etc. You simply configure these settings at /admin/config/system/htaccess if this module is enabled and of course you could only enable this module when upgrading Drupal, to replace the default .htaccess with one based on your settings. I don’t think it should be so dangerous to try this, but you might want to make your own backup copy of your current .htaccess file, just in case anything goes wrong (in theory, this module should also make a backup copy of your existing .htaccess file).
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Image optimize effect
Categories: File Management , Media
The Image optimize effect module, yet another contributed by Peter Droogmans of Attiks , adds two new image effects to optimize image files to reduce your average page size. Most websites do not have very well optimized images and images can be substantially reduced in size, even without noticeable change in quality. This module uses pngquant to optimize png files and imgmin , which can work on various formats, but is best for JPEG files. Of course it depends on the relevant libraries (see the project description). For more information, see this recent article on the Performance Calendar blog: Giving Your Images an Extra Squeeze
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Image Style Pregenerate Insert image with text
Categories: Content
The Insert image with text module, developed by Esben von Buchwald of Reload! , extends the Insert module to modify the image markup to include caption text below the image. I don’t know how this compares to other methods of adding an image caption, but if you are already using Insert, and you want a simple way to include image captions, this module could be useful.
Status: There are dev releases available for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7.
Joyride jQuery Tabs Field
Categories: Content , Content Display , Fields
The jQuery Tabs Field module, contributed by Varun Mishra , allows you to create up to seven tab fields, each with a “body” and “tab title” on any node where this field is part of the content type. On viewing the node, the module will format the output to display each as horizontal tabs, which can make for more attractive output. This is relatively simple compared to options where you could have a number of fields in each tab, but if it fills the requirements of your use case, this simplicity would be ideal. There are already quite a few sites using this and it should become much more useful when the “body” of each tab supports HTML formats (currently it only accepts plain text, but the first issue for this module has elicited a promise to get HTML support in there.)
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Kazoo API
Categories: Third-party Integration
The Kazoo API module, contributed by Bevan Rudge of Drupal.geek.nz, integrates the Kazoo REST API telecommunications platform into Drupal-based sites. This is fairly complex and the use cases for this are somewhat limited, so I’m not going to bother going into great detail, but it’s interesting to know about, nonetheless.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Kim Jong-filter
Categories: Content Display , Novelty
The Kim Jong-filter module, coded by the prolific Peter Lieverdink of Creative Contingencies , provides an input filter that wraps all occurrences of names of great leaders in a <span> element with a suitable class for easy highlighting. Of course you could use it for other purposes, so this might be more than an odd novelty module.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Language fallback
Categories: Multilingual
The Language fallback module, written by Peter Droogmans , a very active contributor who has done a lot for multilingual functionality in Drupal, allows you to specify a fallback language for each language on your site, so if a string is found untranslated in the preferred language, you can get the next closest language translation file. Example use cases are for regional variants of a language, so if there is no translation in “nl-be” (Belgian Dutch), it would default to a translation found in Netherlands Dutch “nl-nl” and finally default to a standard translation found in “nl”, if available. This could certainly be useful and I believe this is a backport of functionality that’s already been built into Drupal 8 “core” (if not, I suspect it will be ported to Drupal 8 as a contrib module).
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Layouter - WYSIWYG layout templates Lazyloader filter
Categories: Filters/Editors , Media
The Lazyloader filter module, authored by Derek Webb of CollectiveColors , provides an input filter for lazy loading images as they may appear in textareas and relies on the Lazyloader project for the actual lazy-loading of images. This module only provides a filter that renders <img> tags in a manner consistent with the needs of the Lazyloader module, while allowing you to theme the image output to your liking and preserve original image attributes. This looks useful.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Leaflet MapBox
Categories: Location
The Leaflet MapBox module, contributed by Jaime Herencia of WebPartners , provides integration between another Drupal contrib module, Leaflet (which integrates the Leaflet JavaScript mapping library), and MapBox . The Leaflet module’s project page actually links to an example which uses Mapbox: The Intertwine , which documents trails in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan region. This site really looks cool, so if mapping functionality is important for your site, this might be useful for you.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Link CSS Local Foodhub
Categories: Commerce/Advertising , Features Package
Local Foodhub defines the commerce functionality to support a foodhub in a community, where producers and consumers attend a regular collection day where ordered products can be collected. Foodhubs are a convenient way to provide local produce for people in the community while giving producers more regular orders.
—Project description
The Local Foodhub module, developed by Paul Mackay , is a project description which definitely looks interesting, although there is, as of this time, no code released. Normally I don’t include modules in this column if there aren’t at least some Git code commits, but there is enough information already, and I like the idea well enough that I’m making an exception here. We need to have more local food production and distribution… and infrastructure to support this if we want to live in a future with more environmentally sustainable practices, so on behalf of my future children and grandchildren, I give thanks for people working on projects like this.
Status: Check back. Currently no project code.
Mobile Switch (Varnish version)
Categories: Mobile , Theme Enhancements
The Mobile Switch (Varnish version) module, developed by Paul Maddern of ITV , provides a simple automatic theme switch functionality for mobile devices, utilising Varnish for detecting the user-agent and providing proper cacheable pages using the same URLs per mobile device group. This helps avoid bootstrapping Drupal while still presenting the appropriate, cached content for each device type. Nice! Of course getting this all right is not simple, so be sure to peruse the project page for more complete implementation details.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Moodle Connector
Categories: Third-party Integration
The Moodle Connector module, produced by Pere Orga , aims to provide a common interface for modules that integrate Drupal with the open-source Moodle e-learning system. It does not provide any end-user features and the initial release simple adds an admin configuration page for you to enter Moodle credentials, but there are plans for some other appropriate features. If you have a site that bridges Drupal and Moodle, this could be a worthwhile module for you.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Multilingual Panels Organic Groups formatters
Categories: Organic Groups (OG)
The Organic Groups formatters module, produced by Eric Mulder of LimoenGroen , extends Organic Groups by adding additional field formatters for the “Groups Audience” field. The “Group delimited list” formatter allows you to display Group names (labels) as a delimited list. Other formatters may be added if requested in the issue queue.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Panels Image Link Pants PDF Forms API
Categories: Developer , Third-party Integration
The PDF Forms API module, authored by Kevin Kaland of WizOne Solutions , is an API module which you should only install if another module requires it or if you are a developer and want to use its functions, which are initially focused on PDF form functionality.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Pinterest Verify Website Polychotomous Keys
Categories: Content , Utility
The Polychotomous Keys module, written by Ed Baker of the Natural History Museum , “allows you to build polychotomous keys using Views ”. At least that is the “project description”, but currently there is not even a single code commit. While that would normally mean I’d skip the project for inclusion here, I’m interested in modules being developed for academics and there could be a lot of use cases for such a module. I’m looking forward to seeing it in action.
Status: Check back. Currently no project code available.
Prelaunch
Categories: Administration , Content Display , User Access & Authentication
The Prelaunch module, written by Dominique De Cooman of Ausy/DataFlow , allows you to set one page of a Drupal site as “prelaunch page”. An example use case might be to display a webform to collect emails to notify interested parties when your site is launched, or page with information about what’s coming. Your site can essentially be “offline” without using maintenance mode; it prevents users from accessing any part of the site besides the prelaunch page (although assigned roles can access other areas). This definitely sounds useful.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Pushtape Admin
Categories: Features Package
Pushtape Music is actually a Drupal distribution for musicians, which was initially released about 18 months ago. So why am I including it here? Well, I’m not really, but there are five new Features package modules which were released in December which are all geared toward improving support for building sites with Pushtape and which might be useful even if you aren’t using the distribution. All of the following modules were contributed by Farsheed of Zirafa Works :
Pushtape Admin contains admin views and menus.Pushtape Audio adds a simple file field to the Track content type to allow uploading mp3 files.Pushtape Events configures an event content type, view, and menu link.Pushtape News creates a news content type, view, and menu link.Pushtape Photos creates a simple photo-set to share a group of photos. Content type, views, and menu link are bundled; this also uses Colorbox .Status: For each of these modules, there are development releases available for Drupal 7.
Radix Layouts
Categories: Content Display , Theme Enhancements
The Radix Layouts module, produced by Arshad Chummun , provides responsive panels layouts set to work with Panopoly and the Radix theme (also contributed by Arshad Chummun). If you are using Panopoly, you might like Radix and if you are using Radix, you might like this module, especially if you need responsive layouts for mobile devices.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Restaurant Search API Stanbol Single Image Formatter
Categories: Fields
The Single Image Formatter module, created by Federico Jaramillo of SeeD , exposes a formatter that displays one image from a multi-value image field. It allows the same options as the original image formatter, but adds an option to choose which image to display. For some use cases, the Field multiple limit may be more suitable, but the Single Image Formatter might be more efficient for situations where there are many values in a multi-value image field.
Status: There is a stable release available for Drupal 7.
Sky field
Categories: Administration , Content , Content Construction Kit (CCK) , Content Display , Fields
The Sky field module, created by Leonid Mamaev and Alexander of ADCI, LLC , is sort of a new, improved version of the Node field module released a few months back by the same developers. It allows you to add unique custom fields to any single Drupal entity (node, user, comment, etc). You can add text fields, long text fields, links, radios, select, checkbox, taxonomy terms, among others and includes an API to add support for additional field types. This could be very useful for sites where an occasional instance might benefit from an extra field that isn’t normally used for that content type.
Status: There is a beta release available for Drupal 7.
Twysi
Categories: Third-party Integration
The Twysi module, created by Tony Star of Acronis, is “an amazing Twitter Bootstrap WYSIWYG HTML5 editor”, at least that’s what the project description says. But it might be a bit early to tell about the module, itself. Currently, if I install the wysihtml5 library, I can select it as the editor for a given text format, but no buttons are present and no editor shows up on a text area. That said, this does sound like a project worth checking back on.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
URL token
Categories: Content Access Control , User Access & Authentication , Utility
URL token is an API module that provides token-based authentication for other modules, where the token can be used in URLs without requiring a Drupal user. Tokens can also be limited to a set number of uses or a fixed period of time.
—from the project’s README.txt
The URL token module, by Marcus Deglos of Techito , is “an API module to make token-based access control simple”. Normal users should only install this module if another module requires it. Developers might want to take a look at the project page for some decent code examples of how to request a token and check that a token is valid. Note: in case this is not obvious, this module has nothing to do with the Token module. “Token”, in this context, is simply an access key.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Views OG cache
Categories: Organic Groups (OG) , Performance and Scalability , Views
The Views OG cache module, from long-time contributor Amitai Burstein of Gizra , adds a Views time-based cache, configurable per group; uses OG-context to identify a group’s view to cache; includes OG-access integration: if the group is private, caching is done per-user instead of per-group… among other listed features. This definitely looks like it could be useful for sites using both Organic Groups and Views .
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Welcome
Categories: Content Display , Utility
The Welcome module, from Blair Wadman displays a simple, configurable welcome message when a user logs in. Simply enable it at admin/config/people/welcome, and yes Token support is included. The example message displayed at left uses Tokens for both the site-name and username. (Of course the “Swachula” username is courtesy of “Devel generate” and “d7test” is my local Drupal 7 testing environment.)
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
WS Slideshow
Categories: Content Display , Third-party Integration
The WS Slideshow module, contributed by Svetoslav Stoyanov , integrates a Flash-based slideshow, generated by ws-slideshow as a node. I’m not a big fan of Flash, but you have to admit that ws-slideshow looks slick and is reasonably priced for commercial use (free for personal), so if you want a nice looking “Flashy” slideshow, this could be for you. Required contrib modules include: Filefield Sources , Plupload , FileField Sources Plupload , Transliteration , and, of course, Libraries .
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7.
Yet Another Yellow Box
Categories: Content Display
This is mostly being used to announce weather-related school closings on sites where I've been using it.
—from the project description
The Yet Another Yellow Box module, authored by Micah Webner of Access-Interactive, provides a simple way to add a prominent “announcement” block of filtered text to any pre-configured region. The contents and visibility of the announcement block can then be managed by users who may not otherwise have permission to manage blocks. If you have a site where staff may need to make emergency announcements, this could be a useful module to set up. See the project page for further information about how to get everything working.
Status: There is a development release available for Drupal 7 and a stable release available for Drupal 6.
Zoundation Support 
