Clean water. Fresh air. Our health. The Link module. Free speech. You mother. All things we take for granted until they're taken away from us.

The Link module isn't like its big, important parent, CCK, or its hey-look-at-me-I'm-included-with-core-CCK siblings Text and Number or its hoity-toity cousins Node and User Reference. No, Link module is out in the ginormous sea of Drupal modules, fending for itself, and doing a pretty darn good job at it.

When you need to add a link to a content type, you do it with the Link module. Period. End of story. But does Link get any love? Hardly. It was abandoned for a short time in 2009. As of March, 2009, it has just 2 (albeit perfect) reviews on DrupalModules.com.

You'd think that as the 21st most downloaded module from Drupal.org, the Link module might have a screencast or two dedicated to it. Nope. You'd think that people would be blogging about its amazing functionality. Nope. We all just use the Link module without really appreciating it - just like our mothers (we suck).

Next time you need to add a link field to a content type, think about how fantastic it is to be able to optionally add a title for that link. How effortlessly it is to set that link to open in a new window. How much you appreciate the fact that you can set 'rel="nofollow"' on that bad boy. How happy it makes you when that 342 character Huge URL your users enter gets automatically shortened to 70 characters (complete with a pretty little "..." on the end).

Shame on you for taking the Link module for granted. Go call your mother.