The Views module is a powerful query building tool that provides administrators the ability to dynamically select and display content as well as format its presentation.

In this series, we’ll take a look at the default views that come with the Views module and how to modify them. We’ll explore the Views User Interface. We’ll create a fictional shoe shop and display our products in a grid using Views. We’ll cover the basics of adding fields, filters and sort criteria, as well as more advanced topics like relationships and contextual filters. We’ll walk through all of the settings in the Views UI, even ones that don’t get a lot of attention, like those for caching and AJAX. We’ll take a look at the various display types that come with the Views module including Page, Block, Feed and Attachment. And we’ll finish up by taking a look at how to export and import a view from one installation to another.

The Views module is the most downloaded contributed module according to Drupal statistics. Many would agree that building Drupal sites would be virtually useless without the Views module. In fact, it is so widely used that it is included in Drupal 8 Core.

But, since Drupal 8 isn’t out yet, this series will cover how to use Views in Drupal 7.