Take Control of the Drupal Body Fields

One thing I always wondered about when it comes to Drupal is why there are no out-of-the-box setting for the size of the Body field in content types, as well as the comment textarea field. I mean, they are big (body is 20 rows for example) and take up a lot of screen space. Since they already come with a resize option it is very easy to resize them when needed.

Searching for how to change the size will give you a lot of hits about doing so in CSS. Sure, its an easy way of fixing it. But every time you need a new size you need to add a new CSS style, upload it to your theme directory, flush the caches and so on.

Today I found a much better option, the:

Node and Comments Form Settings module

The Node and Comments Form Settings module adds a field to each content type where you simply type in the number of rows you want the default Drupal body field. The same for comments as well.

It does much more than that. It also allow you to:

• Change the text for the Save button (both node and comments).
• Disable the Split summary option (for teasers).
• Show a Cancel button after the Save/Preview buttons at the bottom.
• Disable Input Format fieldgorup.

Plus several other useful enhancements.

Since I can do all the above on a per content type basis, I now can fine-tune each content types edit form quickly to my needs. It really saves a lot of work that otherwise would have gone into theming them. Best of all, the settings are where they belong - in the content type settings.

Node and Comments Form Settings is definitely earning its place on my list of must have modules.