The open-source Drupal project would not be what it is today without the thousands of people around the world who develop and maintain contributed modules. As of this writing, there are a total of 42,690 modules for various versions of Drupal so it goes without saying that a Drupal beginner might find that choosing a base set of contributed modules to be a rather daughting task. Since Drupal 7 will be reaching it's end of life in November 2021 (not too far away!) and that most new sites are now being developed on Drupal 8 (unless you're in the group that is waiting for Drupal 9 to release sometime in 2020) I would like to provide a list of Drupal 8 modules that in my opinion are essential for any new Drupal 8 project.
Drupal 8 Module #1
Chaos Tools Suite
This suite is primarily a set of APIs and tools to improve the developer experience.
Drupal 8 Module #2
Token
Provides additional tokens not supported by core (most notably fields), as well as a UI for browsing tokens.
Drupal 8 Module #3
Admin Toolbar
Provides additional tokens not supported by core (most notably fields), as well as a UI for browsing tokens.
Drupal 8 Module #4
Pathauto
The Pathauto module automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias.
Drupal 8 Module #5
Paragraphs
Paragraphs is the new way of content creation! It allows site builders to make things cleaner so that you can give more editing power to your end-users.
Drupal 8 Module #6
Metatag
The Metatag module allows you to automatically provide structured metadata, aka "meta tags", about a website.|
Drupal 8 Module #7
Webform
Webform is the module for making forms and surveys in Drupal.
Drupal 8 Module #8
Field Group
Fieldgroup will, as the name implies, group fields together. All fieldable entities will have the possibility to add groups to wrap their fields together.
Drupal 8 Module #9
Video Embed Field
Video Embed field creates a simple field type that allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo and show their thumbnail previews.
Drupal 8 Module #10
Google Analytics
Adds the Google Analytics web statistics tracking system to your website.
Drupal 8 Module #11
Redirect
Common API for loading, saving, and deleting redirects from old urls to new urls.
Drupal 8 Module #12
Entity Browser
Goal of this module is to provide a generic entity browser/picker/selector.
Drupal 8 Module #13
Simple Sitemap
Every webpage needs an automatic XML sitemap generator for SEO reasons.
Drupal 8 Module #14
Embed
A framework module to embed things using the Drupal 8 WYSIWYG editor.
Drupal 8 Module #15
Entity Embed
Entity Embed allows any entity to be embedded within a text area using a WYSIWYG editor.
Drupal 8 Module #16
Configuration Update Manager
Supplements the core Configuration Manager module, by providing a report that allows you to see the differences between the configuration items provided by the current versions of your installed modules, themes, and install profile, and the configuration on your site.
Drupal 8 Module #17
Honeypot
Honeypot uses both the honeypot and timestamp methods of deterring spam bots from completing forms on your Drupal site.
Drupal 8 Module #18
Linkit
Linkit provides an easy interface for internal and external linking with wysiwyg editors by using an autocomplete field.
Drupal 8 Module #19
Libraries API
The common denominator for all Drupal modules/profiles/themes that integrate with external libraries.
Drupal 8 Module #20
SMTP
This module allows Drupal to bypass the PHP mail() function and send email directly to an SMTP server.
Drupal 8 Module #21
Sitemap
This module provides a site map that gives visitors an overview of your site. It can also display the RSS feeds for all blogs and categories.