Blog Archive: June 2018

Talsi Evangelical Lutheran Church

29 June, 2018 | Churches and Monasteries | 6 seen

On the top of the abrupt Baznīcaskalns (Church Hill) stands the white masonry Talsi church – the dominant of the old town.

It was built in 1567 and later rebuilt for several times. A transept and sacristy are attached to a rectangular, elongated building.

Talsi Evangelical Lutheran Church

The square bell-tower is attached on the west side of the church, it has a pyramidal spire with a sphere, rooster and a cross. The church spire, the rooster, the tiled roof, the façade and the interior were renovated in 1996 – 1998. The relics of the church witness its history.

The most brilliant among them are the epitaph of Fishers’ family (1794) that was carved in limestone and have some Classicism style features, and the altar painting “The Ascension of Christ” (1876) by K. Šēnherts (C. Schönherr).

Two stained-glass windows by Ludis Bērziņš adorn the church (1986, a present by Mirdza Kangare-Matule). There are two bronze bells in the church tower (The oldest of them -1601). Many eminent priests have served in this church. Karl Ferdinand Amenda is the most popular because he is linked to the name of the musician and composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

Talsi Regional Museum

27 June, 2018 | Museums | 17 seen

Talsi has been on my radar since the Summer of 2017. One of the first tourism attractions I discovered here is Talsi Regional Museum. 

For a long time, I thought it's probably some manor house or something, but doing a Google search I learned I was wrong. Well, as I have never been inside the museum, instead I love wandering in the nearby park. 

Talsi Regional Museum

There are storage, history, art and nature departments in Talsi Regional Museum. In 2006 a new building of museum collections with an exhibition hall was unveiled, which provides an opportunity to hold two new art exhibitions. Schoolchildren are offered educational programs and a program for newlyweds with their witnesses and wedding guests.

Park at Talsi Regional Museum

Another Year, Another Barbeque

25 June, 2018 | Home Remodeling | 5 seen

It has been already a tradition to feature the first barbeque of the year at our rural country house in the blog. See First Barbecue Festival in Our Newly Inherited House

2018 is no exception, and it today's home remodeling series a few photos from the early Spring 2018

Grilling season has just started

Last year we bought an extra huge grill

Cat enjoying such activities

Grilling 2018

How To Embed YouTube video in Drupal 8 (CKEDITOR)

23 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 86 seen

Now, there is one more reason I'm starting to enjoy Drupal 8, embedding YouTube videos in articles now are super easy, thanks to the simple and neat Drupal module - Video Embed Field

In this article, I will guide you through how to configure Drupal 8 built-in CKEDITOR to work with this module.

For another interesting YouTube module for use in Drupal views see Display YouTube videos on Drupal site with YouTube field module

Video Embed field creates a simple field type that allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo and show their thumbnail previews simply by entering the video's url.

Features

• Responsive out the box, optionally make your videos scale proportionally to their container.
• Large contrib ecosystem of video providers supported.
• Easily pluggable, write simple plugins to support any video platform or provider.
• Robust URL matching to support an array of possible inputs.
• Display videos in a modal window, with Colorbox support.
• Display thumbnails with image style support.
• Role based autoplay override, allows configured roles to suppress video autoplay.
• Easily overridable embed markup.
• A direct WYSIWYG integration, provided by the video_embed_wysiwyg sub-module.
• Integration with the media_entity module for websites using the media suite of modules.
• Migrations to D8 from D7 as well as the D6 emfield module.

How to configure Video Embed field to work with CKEDITOR in Drupal 8

Download, install and enable Video Embed field, as we are going to use YouTube videos in the articles (and not in the views), enable Video Embed WYSIWYG (integrates video_embed_field directly into ckeditor. Useful for websites not using the media suite of modules that need WYSIWYG support.)

Visit "Configuration" > "Text formats and editors" > "Configure" your chosen editor. Then drag the video icon onto the ckeditor toolbar and make sure the "Video Embed WYSIWYG" input filter is enabled.

An example here: Hashflare releases Data-center video

Video Embed example

How To Configure Trusted Host settings for Drupal 8 Website

21 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 40 seen

In today's Drupal tutorial series I will talk about Trusted host settings, what they are and how to configure them.

In short, Trusted host settings protects against HTTP HOST Header attacks (prevent your site from thinking it is someone else).

Drupal 7 added a new feature into the core that is not user-facing directly but is sometimes called poor man's cron. The feature triggers the periodic tasks of a Drupal site like emptying log files, sending e-mails, and clearing out caches. This feature, when combined with dynamic detection of the "base url" (added in Drupal 4.7), can lead to some screwy situations.

Let's start with the oblivious, first noticed a warning in a Drupal 8 website, saying:

The trusted_host_patterns setting is not configured in settings.php. This can lead to security vulnerabilities. It is highly recommended that you configure this. See Protecting against HTTP HOST Header attacks for more information.

Warning about Trusted Host Settings in Drupal 8

in case you are running a single website, the solution is simple, open settings.php file and add following code:

For more complicated use, please see following article:  Trusted Host settings

How To Redirect in Nginx all Domain Name Versions to https://www

19 June, 2018 | Servers | 16 seen

As you might already know search engines (Google) sees www.domain.com and domain.com as two separate domain names. If you are not using 301 redirects (www to non-www or vice verse)you might get penalized for duplicate content. 

In Ngnix, there is a simple solution how to make such redirect happen, see: Ngnix Redirect To WWW

Now, things get a bit complicated when https versions are involved. See: Linode: How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu 12.04

Once your website has https enabled, technically speaking you might be dealing with for different domain names:

What we are looking is to redirect all versions to one, I prefer the version with https://www, here is how to achieve that with Nginx server blocks.

Assuming you have already configured server blocks pointing your domain name to https://www open your server config:

And at the end of the code add:

Now, restart Nginx

Hope it helps!

How To Setup Google Analytics For Drupal 8 Website

17 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 39 seen

Setting up Google Analytics for a Drupal 8 powered website is as simple as it is with Drupal 7 website, luckily for us, there is a small and neat module doing the hard work for us.

Google Analytics is one of the essential modules to have for any website, see: Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 3, Essential Modules (Pathauto, Google Analytics, Disqus)

I have been using Google Analytics to track my website performances more than 10 years ago, and without it, I would be like blind. Google Analytics helps a lot.

Now, back to the subject - How To Setup Google Analytics For Drupal 8 Website

To setup Google Analytics for your Drupal site, you'll need:

• Google Analytics tracking ID
• Google Analytics module for Drupal.

Go to www.google.com/analytics and setup your site, to get UI. From admin menu in Google Analytics, chose Create Property

Creating a new property in Google Analytics

As we are creating a tracking code for a website, leave the default, enter your Website name, URL, optionally you could select your industry. Click on Get Tracking ID.

On the next screen your Google Analytics Tracking ID will be displayed, like UA-XXXXXX, write it down, we will need it later. Now you are done with Google Analytics website.

Enable Google Analytics module on your Drupal site, go to analytics settings (admin/config/system/google-analytics)and enter UI number you got from Google Analytics.

Google Analytics tracking ID in Drupal 8

You have some options here, but for the ease of this article, we will leave the rest settings intact.

Make sure to check on Google Analytics website, to see if statistics are actually counted.

Simple as that

Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 3, Essential Modules (Pathauto, Google Analytics, Disqus)

15 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 12 seen

In the third part of Drupal 8, website building from a scratch series I will focus on a few essential must have, modules to boost Drupal website's SEO and usability.

Before continuing to learn how to build a successful Drupal 8 Website, make sure to check out previous articles in the series: Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 1 (Domain name, Hosting), Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 2 (Content Types, Custom Fields, Manage Display)

Despite Drupal 8 has built into the core many nice features and modules missing in the previous Drupal 7 release, there are still some essential modules required to boost your Drupal website to the new heights.

In today's article, I will name them and a brief comment about each of them.

Pathauto

A must-have module for SERP friendly result converts node/1 in my-amazing-tile

The Pathauto module automatically generates URL/path aliases for various kinds of content (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias. This allows you to have URL aliases like /category/my-node-title instead of /node/123. The aliases are based upon a "pattern" system that uses tokens which the administrator can change.

Download Pathauto module

Read How To Setup Pretty URL's For Drupal 8

Google Analytics

A must have to track your website's traffic and analyze audience

Adds the Google Analytics web statistics tracking system to your website

Download Google Analytics

Read How To Setup Google Analytics For Drupal 8 Website

Disqus (Optional)

Replace default Drupal comment system with Disqus. No matter how greatly evolved Drupal 8 if compared to Drupal 7, there is one part that really sucks in Drupal (without heavy modification) - comments. Forget about core comment system and give it a try to third-party Disqus module. Greatly reduces spam.

DISQUS is a comments platform that helps you build an active community from your website's audience. It has awesome features, powerful tools, and it's easy to install.

Download Disqus module

Buying a Vineyard in Georgia

14 June, 2018 | Living in Georgia | 203 seen

The other day a blog reader asked me about purchasing a vineyard in the Republic of Georgia. I do feel flattered being honored as an expert in such topics, but in fact, I'm not.

Sure I have visited a couple of wineries in Georgia (Château Mukhrani Winery, Wine Tunnel Near Kvareli in Georgia (Winery Khareba)), have tasted most of the Georgian wine varieties, but I'm not an expert on buying a vineyard in Georgia (or any other country, heck I would try Italy or France. lol).

Anyhow I decided to wrap up a longer answer in a blog post, and answer in Questions & Answers topic series. I believe the question should focus on two answers -

I believe finding an answer to the second question is as important as the first question.

Reader asks:

We are also interested in purchasing a small vineyard in the Republic of Georgia. We are looking for an established and working vineyard. There is no need for a "livable" structure, but the vineyard needs to have established vines and wine making equipment. The size of the property must be at minimum 4-5 hectares. We would be interested in vineyards throughout Georgia, not just in the established wine regions. Please include all possible details about the vineyards. 

Established and working vineyard - my best bet would be to try and buy out a winery (heck, there are zillions of wineries across Georgia some smaller, some larger) - a quick Google search and I found 30 wineries, vineyards, wine cellars listed on TripAdvisor, see: Wineries & Vineyards in Georgia‎ - could probably approach some of them, maybe some are ready to sell just a part of their business (just vineyard for example) 

Another option - finding a company specializing in selling vineyards or at least agricultural land. Again, a quick Google search and I found interesting company Orbis Reality, company that specializes in selling agriculture land in Georgia, they even had one listing with a vineyard for sale in Kakheti.

• Well-cared vineyard available in the region of Kakheti, East of Georgia!
• The property falls in the village of Kardenakhi, at a distance of 108 kms from Tbilisi that is equal to 1.45 hour car drive. The vineyard is within 400 meters from the main road. 
• Area of the property is 1031 sqm and it has got drip irrigation system.
• The vineyard is 5 years old. There 6 lines of viness, each - 120 meters. 
• Yearly harvest consists of 1.5 tons and yearly expense ranges from 150 to 200 USD.
• The selling price of 1 kg grape in the region is 0.40 USD.

What I personally like about Orbis Reality, they have listings not only about vineyards in Georgia, but also apple orchards, animal farms, fish farms e.t.c. 

Investment Opportunity in Georgia - Fish Farming & Agro Tourism

Now, what about foreigners buying agriculture land in Georgia

Georgia outlawed foreign ownership of its agricultural land, formally enshrining the ban in the constitution on September 26, 2017 (Georgia Keeping Its Land Off-Limits for Foreigners)

The new clause in the constitution contains a vaguely worded loophole for “special cases,” and foreign investors are negotiating with the government to try to avoid a total ban. Hoping for a compromise solution, they avoid open confrontation, but privately they warn that Georgia may pay a significant price for what they perceive as a populist exercise in economic nationalism.

The idea of the ban was born amid concerns that foreigners could, in effect, buy up the countryside if no restrictions were in place. Georgians can get protective of their land and culture, and many feel existentially threatened by the growing number of migrants now living in Georgia

Further reading: Georgian government to ban selling land to foreigners. Good or bad?

Now, I believe it's still possible to buy agriculture land in Georgia by setting up an LLC some other form of legal business

How To Update Drupal Modules via SSH (Putty)

14 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 20 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. 

Tour Description

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 country on Soviet car, visit Gori the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, museum of Stalin, see the Soviet mines, houses of workers, old metal cable cars, hear the stories of people, stay in Soviet sanatorium for one night and see the effects of regime on present time Georgia.

The tour will start in one Soviet-built districts of Tbilisi, here you will switch to Soviet car (don't expect AC and comfort Soviet people were hard working and did not care for comfort). The first you will take ride through Tbilisi streets and see the Soviet governmental buildings, after the short ride you will leave Tbilisi, in an hour you will get to Gori.

Day trip to Gori and nearby vicinity

Here is a museum of Joseph Stalin, the creator of the empire of evil. In the museum, you will hear the stories about his life, see his personal belongings and armored train cart. Our next stop will be in a restaurant, to have Soviet lunch. Soon we will be leaving Gori behind and go to Borjomi.

Borjomi is a city in Central part of Georgia, has beautiful nature and mineral water spring. The mineral water spring resort was the place for vacations in Soviet Georgia. Here you will visit the mineral water park, take walk to Romanof Palace and stay in a Soviet sanatorium(or in an ordinary hotel). The sanatorium has kept its Soviet face and is an unforgettable experience.

In the morning, you will again visit Borjomi mineral water park and leave to Chiatura. Chiatura is mining city, most of its population was mowed to the city to work in mines. The city is full of Soviet cable cars. You will take a ride on one of the cable cars. In the evening you will return to Tbilisi.  

Chiatura Cable-ways Central Station

The Soviet car and Soviet Sanatorium is an option, they can be changed to an ordinary modern car and ordinary hotel.

Starting from $335.00, Check availability and book on Viator.com

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 | 29 seen

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

Security Review

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 URL set / D8 Trusted hosts (protecting against some phishing attempts)
• Views access controlled (protecting against information disclosure)

This module does not automatically make changes to your site. You should use the results of the checklist and its resources to manually secure your site. The results of some checks may be incorrect depending on unique factors of your site.

Here are the results showing issues with a Drupal 7 installation

Security Review

Hacked

This module scans the currently installed Drupal, contributed modules and themes, re-downloads them, and determines if they have been changed. Changes are marked clearly and if the diff module is installed then Hacked! will allow you to see the exact lines that have changed.

This module does not and will not prevent your site from being 'hacked'.

Chmod permissions for files and folders

The Drupal security guide has a section on securing your site with a useful list of items to work through.

There are several approaches to set file permissions for a Drupal website, most common include chmod 755 for sites/default/folder and chmod 644 for public files

If you are using Security Review module,you should investigate step by step, but here is an example for securing your drupal website public_html folder

Let me know!

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 title and body (or content). Image field (for illustrative article headings), category field and tag field is my basic requirements.

The great with Drupal 8, 90% of my desires are already built in the core. Amazing.

Custom display for Article Content type in Drupal 8

This is an example of how I have I display article content type in Drupal 8. An example here: How To Register For HashFlare.io cloud mining contract and start earning

As a matter of fact, I have heavily rewritten original display mode and built this page using both Drupal Views and Content Display options. I will cover details about Drupal Views in some of the future tutorial articles, but for this article let's stick with default display modes.

How to hide author and date information in Drupal 8

One thing I like to have a full control is a date and author information with each article. In the above example, you can see, there is no published date nor the author information. This is the stuff I like to make with Drupal views, but before making a custom Drupal views for Author and published date information, we should hide author and date information from the display.

To achieve this, visit admin/structure/types/manage/article and under Display settings uncheck Display author and date information

Hide author and date information in Drupal 8

Save content type and check how well does it look now.

Adding custom fields to Drupal 8 Content Types

I have written a good amount of info about this regarding Drupal 7, see: Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 13 - working with node display,  but let's refresh our knowledge and see how to add custom fields in Drupal 8.

In Cloud Mining Review website I wanted to add additional category field, and listing each article under a separate category, by default we have already tags enabled in a content type, we could stick with tags only, sure.But I like to have both tags and categories. 

Category names displayed in Drupal 8 using Views

As you can see, there are categories Tutorials, Discounts & Promos. Despite the result is achieved using Drupal views function (which I'll cover in some of the next articles). I had predefined Category field for article content type.

Later we will create beautiful Drupal 8 Custom Taxonomy Term Pages with Views

Now, let's stick with the basic part.

From admin/structure/taxonomy/add add a new Vocabulary (Category, for example), as we are going to have a predefined category, list some of the terms, like Tutorials, Discounts e.t.c. Once you are ready, visit admin/structure/types/manage/article/fields and add a new field - Category 

Manage fields for Drupal 8 Content types

Here we are simply adding a new Entity reference field naming it Category to reference Vocabulary we just created (Category)

Referencing taxonomy in Drupal 8

Save these settings and now from content creation page, you should see the new custom mapped field added to form display

Mapping custom fields in Drupal 8

Congratulations, now you know how to create new fields and taxonomies in Drupal 8. Also, you have learned how to work with display settings to show.hide author and date information.

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

10 June, 2018 | Investments | 24 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 not a day trader), but I admit I use them more often than I would love to think. These charts help. It's fun fact, but I started to master those charts by buying cryptocurrencies (strong buy&hold here). I can even read Fibonacci Retracements.

Technical chart reading and understanding is a must have. Hell, I even have built some popular Google Spreadsheet for tracking both stock and crypto movements.

• Simple Google Spreadsheet to Track Stock Portfolio Changes Using GOOGLEFINANCE
• How To Track Your CryptoCurrencies Portfolio Automatically Using Google Spreadsheets

Trading is fun, trading involves many skills. Trading develops skills.

I'm a long-term investor, investing in peer to peer lending, stocks and crypto market. Peer to Peer lending doesn't ask charts technical analysis, as I'm investing with a buyback guarantee for defaulted loans, and giving a nice 12% yearly - the only concern I have - will the platform will keep afloat and not run away with my money. Trust. 

Stocks - this is the most concerning part of my not a day-trader philosophy - I keep buying Baltic Stocks for a long-term dividend income. There are several stocks yielding 10% and more per annum. Unfortunately, the Baltic stock market is not very liquid, and the culture here is pretty low. I wanted to keep building a small passive income from Baltic Dividend stock by just buying and forgetting about purchases I've made. That's not the case with the Baltic equity market. I would even say the volatility of individual stocks here is larger than in crypto space. For the past 2 months, I've been closely monitoring and performing a few trades, liquidating positions with dividend cuts to 0, just to learn in the next morning that there will be an increased dividend. Then buy back the stock.  The Wild Wild West. 

Crypto investments - hell, that's probably the best place to excel as a day trader (except Forex) - but from my short crypto investor experience I've learned it's better being a swing trader (buying the dips)