The Drupal & Servers section covers practical insights, tutorials, and notes from over 15 years of experience working with Drupal and web infrastructure.
Alongside Drupal development, this includes hands-on work with server environments such as Ubuntu, Nginx, and tools like XTRF, as well as broader topics around deployment, configuration, and performance optimization. The focus is on real-world solutions, debugging, and maintaining production systems rather than theory.
More recently, there has been a shift toward “vibe coding” — rapidly building and iterating on tools with the help of AI. This approach has led to the development of several practical applications for financial markets, including options scanners and other data-driven utilities.
The blog you are currently reading now is more than 7 years old. I launched it back in October 2013 on the Drupal 7 platform. During the years blog has expanded a lot and now is heldong a few…
I was facing problems with some Drupal modules not being supported, before upgrading to PHP 7.4 version. As I had running Ubuntu 16.04 server with Nginx and PHP 7.0 FPM on in I felt a…
Today working on my favorite website - optionsbrew.com, for a moment I faced a small issue - how to display block (s) on the default taxonomy/term page. I remember I was doing such tricks back in…
Recently working on my latest Drupal l9 project - BalticInvestors.com I faced a strange issue - after enabling the core default contact form, it seemed that data is not stored anywhere after actually…
After a long time of thinking, on the late-night of November 8, 2020, I finally launched my latest brainchild - BalticInvestors.com - a website dedicated to investment opportunities in the…
Recently I launched a new Drupal 8 website and was surprised by a spam amount we got via website's contact form (built with Webform module). As the website was new, I was manually…
When building a new Drupal website I prefer working with a Bootstrap theme and apply a subtheme Just like in the case with Drupal 7, theming a subtheme based on Bootstrap is super simple - in…
In this article, you will learn how to setup webserver for serving Drupal websites running with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.4, MySQL and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04 For the following tutorial,…
Time after time I'm facing this issue with gmap markers. As mostly this happens when I'm doing something on the server side with file permissions, I decided to keep the notes here is the problem…
Working on the OptionsBrew.com project (website is powered by Drupal 8) I faced the following responsive table issue while browsing content with a table on smaller screens (phone)Broken…
I was migrating Drupal 7 website to a newer infrastructure (PHP 7.4) and during the migration process when tried to connect to the MySQL database I faced following error - SQLSTATE[42000…
Recently I was rebuilding a compromised VPS on the Linode - this was a small web server serving some 3 established websites. It took me a few hours from A-Z - launch a new Linode…
Unlike in Drupal 7 version where IP banning is enabled by default, with Drupal 8 version, there is one more step added - IP banning must be enabled from the extend section. Here is how. (source)…
Let's Encrypt have done some very good job, providing SSL certificates that everyone can use absolutely for free. Encrypted HTTPS websites should be default in 2020. I have been…
In this article, you will learn how to setup Drupal 8 with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.2, MySQL and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 18.04 For the following tutorial, I used very much the information from my previous…
Around early September 2019, in my Google AdSense dashboard, I noticed a warning informing me to create a separate ads.txt file. I followed the on-screen instruction and did what was asked.…
I've been using Google Spreadsheets literally for everything that can be counted or measured (dividend income, stock trades, body weight and so on). And so did when I decided to build an option…
I have been using Drupal's Social Share counter module for some time already. It worked great until recently it stopped and all posts were showing 0 shares. After a quick research on the modules…
A couple of years ago I launched the Piece of Life project in the frames of this blog. The idea was simple - instead of building a separate website for our photo stories, incorporate it in…
I originally built this mining rig back in December 2017 (during the golden days of crypto), I've unplugged this rig from electricity since September 2018, but I might turn it on again in 2019.…
I share ongoing portfolio progress with a focus on generating income through covered calls on quality stocks. Each update includes positioning changes, trade rationale, and forward-looking adjustments based on current market conditions.