The easiest way is to simply provide the Drupal installer with a URL for the module, and let the installer do all the work.
Note
Many people continue to have trouble getting the installer to function as designed, including me. If it seems to simply sit there without downloading the module(s), switch to one of the other methods.
So, where do you obtain the URL? At the Drupal.org project site. Every contributed add-on module for Drupal has a project page. There you will find a description of the module, and links to its support page, download package, and (sometimes) documentation. These pages are found at http://drupal.org/project/module_name
where module_name
is the desired module. In our case, we will navigate to http://drupal.org/project/Views.
You will often find that there is more than one version of the module available. You will want the URL of the download link for the recommended version for the appropriate Drupal release; 7.x for our use.
Note
Take care using versions that have a suffix of alpha, beta or dev. Alpha means that the module is raw and just starting community testing, and that at this point any of the features of it are subject to change. Beta is further along, and while the features are probably frozen, there can still be many bugs. Dev is a development snapshot, and can go from working to not working on any or all features from snapshot to snapshot. None of these are recommended for use in a production environment. It is best to use a standard release, such as 7x-3.13, with no suffix.
Perform the following steps to download and install Views:
Navigate to the Views project page at http://drupal.org/project/views and scroll down to the Downloads section:
We can see that at this time, the recommended release of Views for Drupal 7.x is 7.x-3.13. We will install it. On a PC, right-click on the Download link beside that release and copy the link location. Choose the version you want,
.zip
ortar.gz
. On a Mac, control-click over the link and choose the appropriate Finder command to copy it.Navigate to the modules install page (
admin/modules/install
) and paste the URL you copied into the Install from a URL text box, and click the Install button.When the installation has completed, click the link to activate the new module. On the module page, scroll down to the Views module (probably at or near the bottom of the page) and check the boxes for Views, Views exporter, and Views UI, then click the Save configuration button.