Automatically Installing New Drupal Modules and Themes

By Lynn Beighley and Seamus Bellamy from Drupal For Dummies, 2nd Edition

To automatically install new Drupal modules and themes, find the URL at which your chosen Drupal module or new theme file is located. (Drupal needs to know where to find it, after all!)

Adding a Drupal module

To direct Drupal to install a module, follow these steps:

On your Dashboard menu bar, click the Modules link.

This opens the Modules page.
Click the Install New Module link.

The Install form appears, as shown in the following illustration.
Paste the URL to your new module or theme in the Install from a URL text box by pressing Ctrl+P or cmd+P.
Click the Install button.

Your module is now installed.

It’s possible that, some web hosts will kick out a nasty error when you click Install. The error message will look something like this:

The specified file temporary://filename could not be copied, because the
destination directory is not properly configured.

To fix this problem, browse to Configuration. Find the section called Media and click File System. Then change the Temporary directory from /tmp to ~/tmp.

Adding a Drupal theme

To direct Drupal to install a theme, follow these steps:

On your Dashboard menu bar, click the Appearance link.

This opens the Appearance page.
Click the Install New Theme link.

The Install form appears.
Copy and paste the URL to your new theme in the Install from a URL text box by pressing Ctrl+P or cmd+P.
Click the Install button.

Your theme is now installed, but still needs to be enabled.