Basic Drupal Modules You Need (Immediately After Downloading Drupal)

Very frequently when you download Drupal, you repeatedly have to go back to the Drupal website to look for modules that you need. If you setup sites based on Drupal, the following modules list (in no particular order) will be a reminder for you to download. (This list is compiled for Drupal 6)

• Adminstration Menu: This is the first module you want to install. Saved you a lot of time customising and managing the Drupal site.
• Google Analytics: Being a Google fan like the millions out there, I install this very early too. Gives you the details of where how, who is accessing your site.
• Google Adsense: Even if you are running a personal blog, which you think no one will ever see, in the course of a year, a few clicks here and there will definitely help recover your registration costs, if not the hosting cost. Consider Adsense Injector too (being used on the top of the this page) which allows you to put adsense ads right after the heading, which is one of the most effective position of an adsense ad.
• Pathauto : Gives you the ability to customise your URLs. Necessary because your site is nothing without Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Poormanscron: If you do not have SSH conectivity to your hosting site, you need this PHP based cron.
• Captcha : You will spend a lot of time weeding out spammers trying to sell you the entire world if you do not install this module. My favorite is the Recaptcha module, which is dependent on the Captcha module.
• xml sitemap : Again a good SEO tool. Automtically builds site maps for your site and even posts it to some popular search engines.
• Backup and Migrate: Its always a good thing to have a backup of your site. You can use this module to instantly recreate your entire site in minutes from the backup.
• Service Links : You write a blog and want those familiar "post to facebook", "post to twitter" links. This is the module. A better one but which depends on Service Links module is Share This.
• Image: If you want pictures, which I believe you will, this is the module. Gives you the option to create gallery to sort and display your pictures better.
• ckeditor: If you want to post your articles without writing html.  This gives you Microsoft Word like buttons to for eg. add links/pictures, change fonts, create tabs etc.
• Views & CCK : Just install them both. Both are very powerful and necessary modules.
• Lightbox2 : They generally say, lightbox2, "is a simple, unobtrusive script used to overlay images on the current page". I would say, upon clicking on an image, it shows the full size picture without opening a new webpage. I love this module.
• mp3 player : Flash based and extremely clean looking player to host all your audio (mp3) compositions on the site for the entire world to see!.

With this, you can then begin to build your site, configure it and possibly add more modules specific to your task. Let me know if I haved missed any of the Drupal modules you commonly use.