Downloading modules when drupal.org is offline

Submitted by Frederic Marand on
Drupal tips and tricks

Drupal.org being unavailable quite frequently these days, some may find it hard to download the module of their choice.

Luckily, the downloads are static files served as public downloads outside Drupal itself: all it takes is knowing the proper URL, and they are all gathered on ftp://ftp.drupal.org/pub/drupal/files/projects, just waiting for your favorite FTP browser.

This is exactly what I was looking for - but what would the settings be for an ftp client?

I use WinSCP and it asks for things like:
Hostname / UserName / Password

I've tried drupal.org with the directory /pub/drupal/files/projects (and I've tried FTP and SFTP

thank you

Just use the links in your brower or wget: all of the major browsers work reasonably well with FTP URLs like these: they will use anonymous access if the URL doesn't contain a user and password (see RFC 959 for details). Now, if you absolutely want to use an dedicated FTP client instead of just clicking on a link, use
  • ftp.drupal.org for the host name
  • anonymous for the user name
  • your e-mail address for the password
  • and browse to directory /pub/drupal/files/projects . Beware: this is a looooong page