Blog Archive: May 2017

Rainy day in Tbilisi - Time Lapse Video

15 May, 2017 | Digital Photography School | 8 seen

That time of the year has come and as usual, in April I return to photograph that lovely brick wall opposite to our apartment, turning green. This year I decided to excel in time-lapse photography and video.

A few months ago I bought an intervalometer (around Christmas time) and today was actually the first time I put it on real action. 

I did a few tests to see how intervalometer actually works, and once get the basic understanding put it to capture 120 shots with 30-second interval (making 30 minutes in total). On-Camera settings, its manual mode, f 11, and ISO 400 (as it was a rainy day, I wanted to make it bright enough). Shot in RAW mode.

Making time-lapse videos are fun, during this 30-minute session I was able to make a coffee, upkeep some things on the blog, and do other stuff. Making this time-lapse involved using Adobe Lightroom for post-processing images, and Adobe Premiere making a video.

Import images to Lightroom, adjust some settings if needed, auto-sync all images, export as jpg 1920 pixels, make sure to remove the watermark

The final comp was made in Adobe Premiere adding a…

A tutorial for creating HDR images in Photoshop

12 May, 2017 | Digital Photography School | 77 seen

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and it is a technique in which many images – usually around 3 or 5 – are merged together, so that details from all the different images show up in the final HDR image. It is simply using the dynamic range over many exposures in one single image.

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Photoshop is a great and very effective tool for merging the series of photos of the same scene you have taken, to give an HDR image with lots of details and tones. In this article, I will tell you how to take photos for merging them into an HDR image, and then how to use the photos for the actual process of making an HDR image in Photoshop.

The logic behind an HDR image is this – one single photo cannot show all the details from the highlights and the shadows. But, if we over-expose an image (make it brighter), we start getting details from the shadow region. Also, if we under-expose an image (make it darker), we get details from the highlights. What if we could do both the things together ?

HDR, in simple words, is combining an over-exposed image with an under-exposed image and a few other…

Facebook Like & Share Buttons on Drupal 8 using Views

11 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 8 seen

In this tutorial you will learn how to setup custom Facebook like & share buttons for Drupal 8 website using views display. No doubt, there are many great modules set and forget configuration. Though if you are looking to display functional social share buttons on views based pages, you will need to come out with custom solution. 

There are many pages and even blocks in Drupal social share buttons to be featured, like custom blocks, taxonomy pages, custom pages and so on.

For Drupal 7 see: Facebook share button for Drupal views

Here is live examples with Facebook like & share buttons I built for Drupal 8 site - tourgeorgia.eu

Custom Drupal 8 views display with Facebook Like and Share buttons

Above you can see a custom block, featuring most popular tours on tourgeorgia.eu.

Facebook social share buttons on Drupal 8 custom pages

Above you can see example with social share buttons on blog page.

Here are two things you will need to take care to make Facebook like &share buttons available on Drupal 8 website

• Add Facebook JavaScript SDK code to html.html.…

How To Add Open Graph Protocol For Drupal 8 Website

10 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 36 seen

In today's Drupal tutorial series I will write down my notes, how to add open graph protocol for Drupal 8 website. 

The Open Graph protocol enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. For instance, this is used on Facebook to allow any web page to have the same functionality as any other object on Facebook. While many different technologies and schemas exist and could be combined together, there isn't a single technology which provides enough information to richly represent any web page within the social graph. The Open Graph protocol builds on these existing technologies and gives developers one thing to implement. Developer simplicity is a key goal of the Open Graph protocol which has informed many of the technical design decisions.

Make sure you check out more information about Open Graph protocol and its use: The Open Graph protocol

Also, for Drupal 7 example, you should check out this tutorial: How to add Open Graph protocol for your Drupal site

Now let's start with a basic, out of the box, Drupal 8 website, with no Open Graph enabled yet, let's try to share some of the articles on Facebook…

How to send OneSignal RSS Push Notifications Using Zapier

7 May, 2017 | Blogging | 8 seen

I've been using OneSignal to collect web push subscribers for my blog, since November 2016, by now I can brag with more than 12,000 web push subscribers for this blog. As I keep writing on many topics, I don't find it a good idea of sending RSS notification for each new article.

How To Setup Web Push Notifications For Drupal 8 (Or Any Other Site) Using OneSignal

Actually this is the thing I'm missing on OneSignal, a better segmentation. By now I keep sending web push notifications manually - once or twice per month.

Recently I started to develop another website, selling tour packages in Georgia (tourgeorgia.eu), and I did find it a good idea to collect web push subscribers there as well. Since tourgeorgia.eu has better user segmentation than my personal blog, and posts aren't published everyday, but about 5-10 times per month - an automated solution like RSS to web push subscribers seems an ideal option.

Unfortunately there is no support of setting up RSS to push subscribers directly on OneSignal, yet, though there is a great and free service Zapier, making the missing connection and allowing to…

How To Setup Web Push Notifications For Drupal 8 (Or Any Other Site) Using OneSignal

6 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 44 seen

Web push notifications are hot in 2017, we will see them more in future for sure. I've been using web push notifications for my personal blog and from what I've seen - it's very powerful marketing tool, allowing you to reach your audience very fast - for blogs and websites that means more returning visitors, for commerce sites that definitely means more sales.

In the past I've tried a few web push notifications providers, but at the end I've chose to stay with onesignal.com, because of it's absolutely free, no matter how many subscribers you have. Right now this blog has more than 7,000 active web push subscribers, growing at the rate of about 2,000 users per month. As my blog covers many topics, I've a pretty high unsubscribe rate too. This is the thing I'm missing in onesignal - more segmentation, as right now web push notifications are enabled on every page on this site, and at the end I have little control figuring out how to segment them.

Anyhow, recently I re-launched an older website covering tourism activities in Georgia, with promotions and deals - and then I realized - this is the right place were to use web…

Mintos.com Review after 3 month investing in Peer to Peer loans

5 May, 2017 | Peer to Peer Lending | 79 seen

April 21st marked 3 month anniversary since  I've been actively investing on Mintos.com marketplace. In today's article I will share some of my key findings on how much some can earn here with little money. 

Update: See my latest Mintos review: Mintos.com Review 2020 (36 Month of Investing in Peer to Peer Lending)

In short - my earnings here are very humble, with last April setting personal interest payment record at EUR 25.83. Depending on your investment strategy - that's from little to a lot. For me, this seems a decent start, and I'm looking to double monthly interest payments here by the end of the year. In general, if things (interest rates) continue to be as they are, it would ask to double my investments here.

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment, US citizens or taxpayers cannot register…

Postfix Send Only SMPT Mail for Drupal 8 on Ubuntu 16.04, Nginx

4 May, 2017 | Servers | 25 seen

If you have recently installed a fresh Drupal 8 site on Ubuntu 16.04 with Nginx running on it and you are getting Unable to send e-mail. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists notice after submitting contact form, you are missing an important element for your site to functions properly.

You could be missing important information about available updates, as Drupal uses cron to sends notification e-mails once updates are available. The following written applies not only to Drupal sites, it basically applies for Nginx and Ubuntu 16.04. Since I was working with a Drupal 8 project when faced unable to send e-mail, I'm mentioning Drupal. 

Inspired by: Email not working with fresh Drupal install on Ubuntu 14.04

Anyhow, here is a simple fix, how to quickly enable mail send for your server.

You will need to have access to your VPS, login with user with sudo priviligies​

Follow on screen instructions, leaving defaults 
Then, edit /etc/postfix/main.cf and set inet_interfaces to loopback-only

10 Day Business / Leisure Trip to the United States (New York & Philadelphia)

3 May, 2017 | Travel guides | 8 seen

A short 10 day trip to the United States, visiting 3 states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) 

Long story short - I had to fly to the United States for one reason - opening a bank account (see: How To Open A Bank Account in the U.S., As A Non-resident Non - citizen, Wells Fargo Bank), for the flight, we decided to go with Ukrainian airlines from Tbilisi via Kyiv to New York City (see: About Tbilisi - Kyiv - New York Flight by Ukrainian Airlines) 

Unplanned flight delay in Kyiv happened for 10 hours, during which I managed to craft a short day trip to Kyiv (see: Short Day Trip To Kyiv, Ukraine) 

Once in the States, on the second day's evening, I was able to handle my financial-related things and it was time for leisure. For the first day's stay, we booked a cheaper hotel in Secaucus, offering a fast and convenient connection to downtown Manhattan reachable in about 20 minutes ($6 per ride in a public bus).

Did some shopping and sightseeing around Manhattan (bought lovely leather shoes from Aldo store)

On January second we bought a bus ticket to Philadelphia (again, traveling in the US by…

How To Override Drupal 8 Frontpage Title

2 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 9 seen

Recently I've started a new Drupal 8 website for a personal project tour listings in Georgia.  As I've been a core Drupal 7 user since 2011, Drupal 8 involves a new learning curve even for me. In this short article I will provide a quick setup how to override Drupal's 8 frontpage title tag using metatag module

In general frontpage of your website should include main keywords for SEO, by default Drupal 8 shows Home | [site:name], which is not very SEO friendly in fact, as what we would love to achieve is to have Your Keywords | [site:name]. 

For example: Best tours in Georgia and Tbilisi - Tourgeorgia.

It took me some time to figure it out, as I didn't find any place in site configuration where I could play with these settings, and ended with installing a very useful module - Metatag, which is good both for SEO and Social Media sharing (as here you can define your custom settings for Facebook, Twitter and even Google SERP results)

For the ease of this simple tutorial let's stick with overrding site name more SEO friendly.

• Download and enable Metatag…

Postcards from New York City

1 May, 2017 | | 6 seen

That time have come, and in today's Piece of Life photo series, we are very exited to list postcards from New York city, if you have been following for a while our photo project, you have already noticed that we have featured postcards from many cities around the world.

New York city has a lot to offer, it's dynamic, calm, strange but let's agree - very interesting for photography and inspiration.

Not to speak more, here are some interesting shoots from New York city, made at the end of 2016 / start 2017.

Always busy 5th avenue in New York

As we arrived just shortly before the New Year of 2017, at start we had a plan to greet New Year at Times Square, but when heard that some 2 million people are planing to attend, and we should be ready to wait in lanes for at least 16 hours, and taking into consideration that about a year ago we did something similar in Venice at St Marks Square in Italy, we opted to stay at our hotel room, pre-order pizza. Yes, kind of best way to meet the New Year.

Always tranquil Central Park

Central Park is very nice place for photography. See more: Central Park, New York City