How To Update Drupal Modules via SSH (Putty)

14 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 21 seen

To strengthen Drupal websites security I decided to disable one-click automatic module updates from Drupal dashboard, unfortunately, it makes it harder not even for bad guys to compromise Drupal website but it also makes it harder for Drupal devs.

Now, there are several options you might choose instead, composer being a top of them. But for this article, I will write down how to update modules using SSH.

For Windows, we are going to use Putty:

From your Drupal installation go to the modules folder

now, using wget download desired modules and extract:

Go back to the Drupal website and run updates. Next, you would like to delete tar.gz file from the modules folder

2 day tour in "Soviet Georgia"

13 June, 2018 | Travel guides | 9 seen

Now, this is interesting, today I was browsing Viator for tours in Georgia, and this one caught my attention - 2 days in Soviet Georgia starting $335.00

My attention was caught with that lovely yellow Soviet VAZ car, I quickly imagined driving around Georgia in such and thought -  cool. By the way, last summer I enjoyed driving in such car in Kiev, I wouldn't call it a pleasant ride, but fun for sure. Regarding this Soviet Georgia tour - I'm not sure who is making this tour happen (sounds like a Brutal Tours to me). For Soviet Architecture lovers in Georgia, I could recommend to Explore Soviet Architecture In Modern Tbilisi alternatively see: Organized tours in Georgia

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to Viator.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on Viator site, I might earn an affiliate income from that. 

This is the lifetime experience tour for people who are interested in life of ordinary people under Soviet regime in Georgia. During these two days you will be able to travel through…

Tapping Birch Sap in the Backyard

13 June, 2018 | DIY | 20 seen

Can't decide on a new hobby? Think about tapping birch sap in early spring. Depending on the region you are located and availability of birch trees you might even enjoy this drink - a birch sap.

In today's article a few photos from tapping a birch sap in early spring in our backyard using Libertu Birch Sap Kit.

You can purchase this kit at sula.lv to get your own tree sap. If you have maple or birch trees in your yard or forest you can get juice very easy. 

Libertu Birch Sap Kit

Bought this kit at the local DIY shop. It was a fun, trying to install it and trying to squeeze a juice from this birch

Plastic bag for collecting birch sap

We left this kit in a tree for about two weeks to collect birch sap.

Securing Drupal Files and Folders (Chmod, Security Review, Hacked)

12 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 31 seen

There are a couple of great helper modules for Drupal to learn more about failing security holes - Security Review and Hacked. 

The Security Review module automates testing for many of the easy-to-make mistakes that render your site insecure.

Security Review runs the following checks:

• Safe file system permissions (protecting against arbitrary code execution)
• Text formats don't allow dangerous tags (protecting against XSS)
• PHP or Javascript in content (nodes and comments and fields in Drupal 7)
• Safe error reporting (avoiding information disclosure)
• Secure private files
• Only safe upload extensions
• A large number of database errors (could be a sign of SQLi attempts)
• A large amount of failed logins (could be a sign of brute-force attempts)
• Responsible Drupal admin permissions (protecting against access misconfiguration)
• Username as password (protecting against brute-force)
• Password included in user emails (avoiding information disclosure)
• PHP execution (protecting against arbitrary code execution)
• Base…

Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 2 (Content Types, Custom Fields, Manage Display)

11 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 10 seen

In the second part of the series Building Drupal 8 Website from the scratch I will cover details on working with content types and node displays. Make sure to check out part 1, before proceeding.

When comparing Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, there is little difference regarding managing content types, except most of the cool features we have been used to have in Drupal 7 by using additional modules and fields, are already built in Drupal 8 core. Which is amazing.

In Drupal 8, fields, like taxonomy term and image field are already enabled by default. If you installed Drupal 8, with standard features (not minimal) - by default there should be already two content types defined for you - basic page and article. 

For the ease of this article, I will cover details on how to work with article content type, but the same rules apply for basic page and for any other custom built content type. As usual, for this tutorial, I will use a live example, my latest Drupal niche website  - cloudminingreview.info

There are few things I'm looking to have for articles to be featured in article content types for this website. Obliviously we are talking about the…

Confession from a Day Trader. Part 1 Denial - I'm not a Day Trader

10 June, 2018 | Investments | 27 seen

Confessions of a day trader is an interesting term, I first discovered about a year ago - a guy from Norway, living in Riga, contacted me about some issues with doing business in Georgia. That guy turned out to be a day trader, writing a popular blog on day-trading. Here is the blog: Quantified Strategies

I thought - hmm, that's cool - Confessions of a day trader, sounds really cool. But that's all I stopped there. The thing is, I don't feel like a day trader and in fact, I'm not (at least in classic understanding of this term). Despite I've been involved heavily in such volatile markets as crypto investments, I rarely trade. I've tried. I have made some success, but that hasn't been interesting to me. So I keep denying and I'm proudly saying I'm not a day trader.

For me day-trading sounds like a rats race, trying to predict the market, trying to predict the right timing, scalping every trade and so on. Technical analysis? Sure, that's the thing I like about investing. RSI indexes, moving averages and so on. I'm not familiar with all those terms yet (well, because I'm…

Kitesurfing Pāvilosta

9 June, 2018 | | 25 seen

Seems Pāvilosta is a popular spot for kitesurfing among surfers from the Baltics. It was on mid-June 2017 we decided to visit lovely white sand beaches near Pāvilosta piers when I noticed some kitesurfer gathering. Seems there was a good wind that day.

As I was equipped with my gear and a telephoto glass - I made some photography here. A piece of Life, after all. 

Kitesurfing in Pāvilosta

Actually, I'm not sure what is the name of this activity - kitesurfing or kiteboarding. According to Wikipedia:

Kiteboarding is an action sport combining aspects of wakeboarding, snowboarding, windsurfing, surfing, paragliding, skateboarding and sailing into one extreme sport. A kiteboarder harnesses the power of the wind with a large controllable power kite to be propelled across the water, land, or snow. On water, a kiteboard, similar to a wakeboard or a small surfboard, with or without footstraps or bindings, is used. Kitesurfing is a style of kiteboarding specific to wave riding, which uses standard surfboards or…

3 High Yield Paying European/US Dividend Stocks in June

8 June, 2018 | Investments | 26 seen

I'm still on my way of building a million dollar retirement account from scratch by the time I will turn 60 (in 2045).

Right now, in June 2018, I've reached just about 1.87% from my goal. My investments this year have been spread across peer to peer lending, dividend-paying stocks, cash and of course cryptocurrencies. If you are interested in current progress, see dividend income reports. 

Originally I had an idea of building monthly dividend paying stock portfolio from the Baltic equities. I have made some good progress, but starting June 2018, I'm shifting away from the Baltics and acquiring both European and the US stocks. 

When looking at EU/US stocks I'm interested in quarterly/monthly dividend paying stocks. As I'm into growth phase from my portfolio, adding cash month after month, right now I'm looking for Real estate investment trusts (REIT) instead of dividend growth stocks. The reason is simple - with REIT's you can find much higher dividend yields. I'm not saying this will help to grow value in the future, I'm saying it will help to generate nice cash flow.…

Pesto Cafe Review in Kiev

8 June, 2018 | Restaurant reviews | 7 seen

Pesto Cafe is a popular restaurant chain located in Kiev, Ukraine. We visited branch located near the Independence square (located inside the shopping mall Globuss). Actually, that was the closest restaurant from our hotel room at Hotel Ukraine,

Pesto cafe serves classic Italian cuisine for pretty affordable prices.

View towards Independence square from Pesto Cafe

Bruschetta at Pesto Cafe

Salads

Grass Trimming 2017

7 June, 2018 | Home Remodeling | 12 seen

It was back at the end of June 2017, we had just returned from about month-long travel (Turkey, Georgia, and Greece) to notice that grass have more than overgrown.

I took my old pall - Edward The Trimmer and started my fight with the grass once more. 

Freshly cut grass

It's always a pleasure seeing such a nice scenery.

Trimming near the flower garden

Trimmer in the rest

Varenichnaya Katyusha Restaurant in Kiev

6 June, 2018 | Restaurant reviews | 23 seen

Varenichnaya Katyusha (Вареничная Катюша) is another cool Kiev's restaurant, discovered by accident back in the Summer of 2017.Turns out Вареничная Катюша is a popular restaurant chain across the Kiev. But I didn't know that back when discovered it.

We found this place after a night boat ride along the Dnieper river and before returning to our hotel room we were just wandering around for someplace offering a meal after the midnight. Varenichnaya Katyusha was open. It's hard to recall an actual location for this particular restaurant. In fact, it was pretty far away from city center, as we took a taxi to get back to the hotel room.

Stylish interior, budget prices, and tasty vareniki - mhm, Tasty Ukraine. 

Stylish hipster style interior

​

Variety of vareniki

We took them all

Building Drupal 8 Translation Project Management System From Scratch

5 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 9 seen

There are many translation project management systems out there, some are better, some are not so good, some are for free or open source while others might be pricey. 

Working in a close and good corporation with a translation company in Tbilisi, in the past, I have helped to set up many systems required for a smooth every-day work for a typical translation company.

Now I decided to see - could Drupal help us build a translation project management system, and surprisingly but after a little brainstorming and a few tests with actual Drupal I found - indeed it's possible to build a translation project management system for internal use of project managers.

And that's why I decided to test building the so-called minimum viable product approach - the system capable of storing data about translators (providers), customers, purchase orders and invoices.

In fact, most of the functionality could be achieved by using Drupal content types, some views and extra pdf and mailing system.

The hard work for handling administrative tasks could be handled by using Drupal views filters.

I believe it will take…

Disco Boat Tours in Kiev, along the Dnieper River

4 June, 2018 | Tourism objects | 16 seen

Boat Tours in Kiev, along the Dnieper River kind of reminded me a popular track from early 2000 by Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage. Loud music, a lot of booze and hell - it's really cool.

We were just checked in at Hotel Ukraine, had some rest after a flight and decided to explore Kiev by night. We went out from the hotel, around the Independence square caught a taxi and asked for some recommendations - boat tour was an idea from the taxi driver. We agreed, and soon we were taken to the place named River Port from where boats are departing.

There are several places in Kiev where the boats depart. The most easily accessible by metro is the River Port (10 min walk from Pochtovaya Ploshchad metro station of the Blue line) and the mooring near the Dnepr metro station (Red line). Embarkation begins 1 hour before the departure time.

Kiev by night

As usual, I was equipped with a sturdy tripod and made some cool night shots and videos tonight. In the background, you can see a bridge over the Dnieper river illuminated in the colors of the national flag of Ukraine

The "Kiev Panorama" 1 and 1.5-hour boat tours allow time to admire…

Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 1 (Domain name, Hosting)

3 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 11 seen

It has been a while since Drupal 8 has been around. It took me some time before I actually started to develop Drupal 8 websites, sticking with more convenient Drupal 7 (Which I believe still is one of the best versions of Drupal out there. 

If you are familiar with Wordpress CMS, Drupal 8 will feel you comfortable, as the look and feels is pretty similar (This is the thing I don't like about Drupal 8). Anyhow, as I have been developing both Drupal 7and Drupal 8 websites, there is actually no difference for me - except there is a minor new learning curve with Drupal 8, but most of the basic things, like the power of the Drupal, the views module is already implemented in the core version (and many more neat options you could get from Drupal 7 with little tweaking)

With this article, I decided to start new Drupal tutorial series on how to develop Drupal 8 website from scratch. As usual, I will give live examples.

For this series - building a Drupal 8 niche website for passive affiliate income - https://cloudminingreview.info

The idea about Cloud Mining Review affiliate site come after I've been exposed a lot to crypto…

Hotel Ukraine in Kiev Review

2 June, 2018 | Hotel reviews | 50 seen

Hotel Ukraine is a 4-star hotel located on Independence Square in the heart of Kiev, this hotel offers air-conditioned rooms and suites with elegant décor. It is a 3-minute walk from the Maidan Nezalezhnosti and Kreschatik Metro Stations.

We booked Hotel Ukraine at the end of July 2017, during my birthday trip to Kiev. We stayed here for some 4-5 days. For getting here from Borispol's airport we hired a taxi, which took us here for about EUR 10 - 20. Once on site, it took us some hour to actually check in, as it turned out the system was down at reception and our reservation was handled by hand (together with some other 30 people). 

The rest was a pleasant stay in a typical Soviet Style hotel, hotel Ukraine has a very interesting history (more on that below)

In-room facilities at the Ukraine Hotel include satellite TV and a refrigerator. Your bathroom includes free toiletries and perfumes. Guests enjoy views of the Kreschatyk Street and the surrounding area.

Hotel Ukraine in Kiev

In the evening I took a tripod and made some Kiev night shots, including Hotel Ukraine.

…