I favour putting a capo between frets 1 & 2 over the first five strings leaving the bottom E string open.
Okay, this means you're playing in E but it gives you the dropped D effect and you can still (mostly) use other normal chord shapes.
The same procedure can be carried out up the fretboard for different keys using two capos. One over 6 strings and one over 5 strings two frets up.