Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 9 - adding menu

9 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 7 seen

<p>To add a menu to your Drupal site, you should enable menu module from your modules page:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/enablemenu.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1162" height="169"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>When enabled, head to&nbsp;admin/structure/menu/manage/main-menu and a few menu links:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/listmenu.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1143" height="254"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Depending on your theme structure, you have two options, either programmatically call menu in your theme, or put it on block. Since in this tutorial we are using Bootstrap theme, which has already called function to show menu, when enabled, after adding menu links, they will be visible on Bootstrap theme.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/menutheme.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1012" height="174"></p>

Population changes in former Soviet Union

8 November, 2013 | Macroeconomics | 146 seen

15 former Soviet Union republics, then and now.

In 1990 in the Soviet Union lived 287.728 million people. In 2012 in the former republics lived 290.587 million people, which is 0.98% increase. A pretty small increase for 22 years.

The thing is, not all former Soviet republics have developed equally in next 22 years, since the collapse of Soviet Union.

Countries with population decrease:

Countries with population increase:

Map of Former Soviet Union

The biggest population increase is in Central Asia, while the biggest decrease is in Baltic states. What is the future for Central Asian countries? Russia is emerging in the Eurasian Union, and Kazakhstan is one of the founding members. Does Russia see the huge potential in developing countries like Uzbekistan?

What about Baltics? The GDP per capita in Baltic's is much higher than in Central Asia (except Kazakhstan), but people leave their countries? Why? Is it free European Union job market? Are there any options for Baltics to attract immigrants? From where? From Central Asia? Are the Baltic's ready for such offer? What can Baltic states offer to Central Asian immigrants? Language barrier? Why should some job seeker from Uzbekistan seek a job in Estonia or Latvia, while he can work in Russia, Kazakhstan where the life level is the same as in Baltics? Huh? 

Some must think of this a lot in close future!

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 8 - Theming subtheme CSS

8 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 7 seen

<p>In part 2 of series how to build a Drupal site from scratch, I'm talking about how to create a subtheme from Bootstrap theme.</p><p>Today I would like to speak how to actually theme it, because just enabled it comes empty,with all files served from Bootstrap mater theme.</p><p>By default Bootstrap theme is set to be 1200px and wider, this is first thing I would like to change for our customers tourism website we are using in thee Drupal series. I don't mind for ite being 1200px and more wider, just I like to them be 940-980px, to work well on most display's.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>In your mytheme/css folder look for style.css file. It's empty, and now let's start overriding it:</p><p>add:</p><blockquote><pre>.container, .navbar-static-top .container, .navbar-fixed-top .container, .navbar-fixed-bottom .container {<br>width: 940px;<br>}</pre></blockquote><pre>&nbsp;</pre><pre>This will make themes default witdth to 940px.</pre><pre>&nbsp;</pre><pre>Actually this is it. Of course you must rewrite each h1, h2, h3 .e.t.c tag.</pre><pre>To do this, just apply your CSS on your subtheme style.css file.</pre><pre>&nbsp;</pre><pre>Bootstrap is responsive theme, so before making any huge edits and overrides, plan how to minimaze your CSS, to use % instead of pixels.</pre><pre>For any custom edits on your views I highly recommend to use seperate css file, like custom.css (Read more <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-7-theming-vi… to theme views</a>)</pre>

Drupal views archive page

8 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 13 seen

<p>Today I decided to give some face-lift to my blog page. I wanted to add an archive function to filter blog posts by month. If you have views enabled, you can use default view archive, which comes with views.</p><p>Since I already had created a page blog, I didn't see any use to use 2 identical views - archive and blog. So I didn't enabled archive view, instead I fine tuned my existing blog page view:</p><p>Add Contextual filter:&nbsp;<strong>Content: Created year + month</strong>, to your blog page.</p><p><img src="http://www.reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/contextual-filter.JPG&…; alt="" width="1117" height="528"></p><p>Set&nbsp;<strong>Display all results for the specified field</strong>&nbsp;WHEN THE FILTER VALUE IS NOT IN THE URL</p><p>Override title <strong>Blog %1</strong></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>These settings will allow to pass argument in URL, by not making any harm to your existing blog page.&nbsp;</p><p>Now lets add new block from views. And head to Contextual filetrs section. Change behaviour for&nbsp;Content: Created year + month</p><p><img src="http://www.reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/changedisplay.JPG&quot; alt="" width="702" height="552"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Save your view. Go to blocks page, and add new block you just created to some of your theme regions (like sidebar).</p><p>And here is the result:</p><p><img src="http://www.reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/blog.JPG&quot; alt="" width="971" height="238"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>If pressed on October:</p><p><img src="http://www.reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/blog-october.JPG&quot; alt="" width="971" height="230"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/blog">Try a live example here</a></p>

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 7 - Theming views

7 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 4 seen

<p>In <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-5-custom-fro… 4</a> in tutorial series how to build a Drupal site from scratch, I am showing how to build views. Now let's upgrade them, by adding additional fields and even CSS style.</p><p>Yes, we will add CSS style directly into our views.</p><p>Lets go back to our view tours (if you are new to this series, please read <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-4-creating-v… to create a Drupal views</a>)</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>In part 4 we have already changed Format for Featured blocks to fields, lets apply the same for page display:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/changestyle.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1076" height="434"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Now lets add some fields to our view:</p><p>By default we already have Title field</p><ul><li>Add Photo field</li><li>Add Body Field</li></ul><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/bodyfield.JPG&quot; alt="" width="743" height="568"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>As you can see from picture above, I have changed default formater to Trimmed, and added Trim length to 200. You can play with settings under Rewrite results as well.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/photofields.JPG&quot; alt="" width="749" height="557"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>These are the settings, I added to Photos field.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Ok, now, save the view, and lets see, how it looks in real.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/tourspage.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1188" height="463"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Nothing impressive, right? How to make this look better? By using CSS.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Head back to your view, and add a new field - Custom text:</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/customtext.JPG&quot; alt="" width="754" height="565"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Hey, did you just pass a CSS via Views? Yes, I did, indeed.</div><div>As you can see from picture above I'm using Replacement Patterns to override our view. And I'm passing them together with custom CSS.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>But, before, you save (Of course you can save your view now) you must be aware, we didn't exclude fields from our view display, and the result will look like this:</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/multiplefields.JPG&quot; alt="" width="583" height="537"></div><div>To avoid this, we must exclude all fields, except rewritten Custom Text field from display. Like this:</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/excludetitle.JPG&quot; alt="" width="749" height="557"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Ok, what we have done so fare? We have created a view, added few custom fields, and made a Custom text field to rewrite all values wrapped in CSS. Where to go with CSS?</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>In part 2 of these tutorial series, I showed <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-2-applying-s… to apply a subtheme based on Bootstrap</a>. Today is time to add some CSS to our sub-theme.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>I prefer all custom CSS files to keep in separate style sheet, if you are just as me, then you should create a new .css file on your mycustotheme/css folder, I will name it custom.css.</div><div>Enter your CSS:</div><div>I will use something like this:</div><div><blockquote><pre>#grid4 {<br>float: left;<br>width: 20%;<br>-moz-box-shadow: 0 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);<br>-webkit-box-shadow: 0 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);<br>box-shadow: 0 2px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.2);<br>height: 266px;<br>margin-bottom: 30px;<br>margin-right: 10px;<br>padding:10px;<br>}</pre></blockquote></div><div><ul><li>Next head for mycustomtheme.info file in your theme folder, open it and a line:</li><li>stylesheets[all][] = css/custom.css in Style-sheets section</li><li>Flush all caches, to make sure your style applies</li></ul></div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/themedtourpage.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1094" height="617"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Well. is up to you how you gonna style your view display, but I hope this give you a overall impression - how to add and theme fields via views</div><div>&nbsp;</div>

Week #5 of blogging 365 days in a row

7 November, 2013 | Blogging | 1 seen

<p>Fifth week of <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/can-you-blog-365-days-row">blogging 365 days in row</a> has already passed away. I need to confess - without future posting feature, nothing wouldn't work out. There are days, I'm not even looking into my blog, don't speaking of writing a content.</p><p>At the end of October I created a dozen of posts, to publish till middle of November. That was smart, right? When you have an inspiration, write, write, write, but don't publish all together, keep it for rainy days.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>So yes, 5th week was on of those rainy day weeks, and Haven't contributed much content - BUT - <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/30-days-twittering-row">I have started to use Twitter</a>, and have gained already 22 followers (up from 5) when I started.</p><p><img src="http://www.reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/twitter.JPG&quot; alt="" width="539" height="319"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>During month of November, I'm not using (not looking) any analytics, so by the end of month (at start of December) - I'll publish my thoughts of Twitter impact on small blog. But right know I have this feeling - Blog + Twitter = Must have!</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I have a few ideas in future to play with Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and other social media sharing tools.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 6 - Working with blocks

6 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 2 seen

<p>In <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-4-creating-v… 4</a> of this Drupal tutorial series we created a view with block - Features tours. Now is the right time, to do something with this block. And we gonna put this block on our <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-5-custom-fro… access blocks section in your Drupal site, head to structure/block:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/featuredtourblock.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1081" height="258"></p><p>Drag this block to Content block area:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/dragblocks.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1052" height="260"></p><p>Be sure to click the save button.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>To make this block availiable only on frontpage, click configure and enter settings as bellow:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/jutfront.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1037" height="455"></p><p>Now our block containing data from view, we created before, has been setup to be displayed only on front page.</p><p>Let's see:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/frontblock.JPG&quot; alt="" width="828" height="168"></p><p>Remember we created a view with block Featured tours, to display nodes which are just sticky? The 2 from picture above I made sticky, to demontrate.</p><p>Next time, I'll provide information, how to add more fields to your view, and how to write and apply css styles for them.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 5 - Custom fronpage

5 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 6 seen

<p>By default Drupal comes with frontpage set to display latest 10 nodes from your site:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/frontpagedrupal.png&quot; alt="" width="632" height="573"></p><p>Which might be ok, if you are runing some blog, but if you are looking the ways how to change default frontpage, you must take a look under system/site-information. In the section default front page it's set to /node (container of your latest posts)</p><p>I'll show one technique I'm using to setup custom, views powered frontpage:</p><p>In previous parts of this tutorial I have already showed <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-4-creating-v… to install views and how to create a view</a>&nbsp;</p><p>This time we gonna enable view frontpage from our views page:</p><p><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/enablefrontpage.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1174" height="327"></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Go to /admin/structure/views and search for View Front page, anc click on button - enable. Then move to edit this view:</p><ul><li>Change Format show from Content to Fields</li><li>Add a new field Custom text</li><li>Uncheck Create a Label</li><li>Under Pager settings, change pager to Display a specified number of items and enter 1 in items per page</li><li>Save your view</li></ul><div>Now go back to Site information, and change /node to /frontpage</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Now visiting your front page, you should see - nothing! That's great - in next parts I'll show how to add blocks to theme regions, so you have you custom frontpage rocking!</div><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 4 - Creating views

4 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 9 seen

<p>Let's move on with our tourism companies website tutorial.</p><p>In part 1 we created a custom content type - Tours, now it's time to make a few views which will contain data from node related to content type - tours.</p><p>Before creating views - we must download a few modules, to get them work:</p><ul><li><a href="https://drupal.org/project/views">Download Views</a></li><li><a href="https://drupal.org/project/ctools">Download Ctools</a></li><li>Extract both to sites/all/modules</li><li>Enable Views, Views UI modules</li></ul><div>A bried explanation from creators of Drupal views:</div><div><ul><li>You like the default front page view, but you find you want to sort it differently.</li><li>You like the default taxonomy/term view, but you find you want to sort it differently; for example, alphabetically.</li><li>You use /tracker, but you want to restrict it to posts of a certain type.</li><li>You like the idea of the 'article' module, but it doesn't display articles the way you like.</li><li>You want a way to display a block with the 5 most recent posts of some particular type.</li><li>You want to provide 'unread forum posts'.</li><li>You want a monthly archive similar to the typical Movable Type/Wordpress archives that displays a link to the in the form of "Month, YYYY (X)" where X is the number of posts that month, and displays them in a block. The links lead to a simple list of posts for that month.</li><li>Views can do a lot more than that, but those are some of the obvious uses of Views.</li></ul><div>&nbsp;</div><div>If you followed tutorial <a href="http://reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-3-better-adm… 3 - for better site administration</a>, then you have admin menu installed. After enabling Views module, we can find path to views under Structure menu, if not, you must go to /structure/views</div></div><div>&nbsp;<img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/addviews.JPG&quot; alt="" width="583" height="164"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>We gonna add new view: Tours, with page (path) and custom block:</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/toursview.png&quot; alt="" width="1052" height="347"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>As you can see from picture above we are filtering content type Tour. Click Continue and edit.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/featuredtours.png&quot; alt="" width="1190" height="560"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>From picture above you can see, that I have added a block, and renamed it Featured tours - it will be the block container, which will showcase Featured tours, based on whether content is marked sticky, or not. To add such behaviour, we must add a filter - sticky:</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/stickyfilter.JPG&quot; alt="" width="925" height="433"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Pay attention that I have applied this filter just for this, and not all displays.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>For now save the view.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Now by accessing path /tours, we can see all tours we have entered.&nbsp;</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><img src="http://reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/tourpath.JPG&quot; alt="" width="1056" height="487"></div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>In next part's I'll show how to theme views, where to put Featured tours block we just created, how to add menu items, and how to setup a custom frontpage.</div>

10 largest countries by military expenditures 2012

4 November, 2013 | Macroeconomics | 29 seen

In a world shaped by geopolitical dynamics, military spending plays a pivotal role in defining a nation's strategic capabilities. Let's delve into the realm of defense budgets and unveil the top 10 countries that invest significantly in their military apparatus.

1. The World's Top 10 Richest Countries by Military Expenditures:

• United States: $682.478 billion
• China: $166.107 billion
• Russia: $90.749 billion
• United Kingdom: $61.007 billion
• Japan: $59.267 billion
• France: $58.943 billion
• Saudi Arabia: $56.724 billion
• India: $45.785 billion
• Germany: $43.478 billion
• Italy: $34.004 billion

As the chart above illustrates, the United States leads in military spending, a testament to its robust defense budget.

2. GDP Nominal per Capita for Military Expenditures:

• United States: $2.174 thousand
• Saudi Arabia: $2.005 thousand
• United Kingdom: $0.964 thousand
• France: $0.89 thousand
• Russia: $0.632 thousand
• Italy: $0.558 thousand
• Germany: $0.53 thousand
• Japan: $0.464 thousand
• China: $0.122 thousand
• India: $0.037 thousand

Once again, the United States takes the lead, with Saudi Arabia in second place. It's intriguing to note the positions of China and India in the ninth and tenth places, prompting us to consider the potential impact of a hypothetical increase in their military expenditures.

3. Future Perspectives: Military Expenditure as a Percentage of GDP:

• Saudi Arabia: 8.9%
• United States: 4.7%
• Russia: 4.4%
• United Kingdom: 2.5%
• India: 2.5%
• France: 2.3%
• China: 2.1%
• Italy: 1.7%
• Germany: 1.4%
• Japan: 1%

The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia emerge as the most eager countries, allocating 4.7%, 8.9%, and 4.4% of their GDP, respectively, to military expenses.

4. Global Dynamics and Military Alliances:

Within the top 10, five countries are NATO members (US, UK, France, Italy, Germany), while two are close allies of the U.S. (Saudi Arabia, Japan). Despite the current outlook indicating a stable status quo, close attention is warranted for potential shifts among Russia, China, and India, who are key partners in BRICS.

In conclusion, the landscape of military expenditures paints a complex picture of global power dynamics. While the U.S. maintains its supremacy, shifts in the allocations of emerging powers such as China and India could reshape the geopolitical landscape in the years to come. As we navigate this intricate terrain, the world watches with anticipation to discern the future trajectory of military spending and its implications for international relations.

Week #4 of blogging 365 days in a row

3 November, 2013 | Blogging | 1 seen

<p>3d week of blogging resulted in 15 blog posts. Nothing much to tell more.</p><p>At the end of 3d week I realized there is need to implement some Twitter strategies, do drive traffic to my blog. Decided to use Twitter strategy for whole month of November.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

Dauphinoise potatoes

3 November, 2013 | Food blogger | 6 seen

Time by time, I like to experiment with food preparation, this time I decided to make a Dauphinoise potato, inspired by BBC Good Food recipe. 

As it might happen, it happened this time as well - I didn't stick to BBC food preparation methodology.

What did I do?

I sliced potatoes, made a bechamel sauce. Took a pan, made the first layer with bechamel sauce, few rows with sliced potatoes, again bechamel sauce, salt, and pepper, again sliced potatoes. Actually kinda a lasagna from potatoes, right?

Baked for about 1 hour at 200° C... at the end added cheese for toppings.

I liked it. Good with some meatballs. 

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 3 - Better administration

3 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 10 seen

Recently I started a tutorial series - How to build a Drupal site from scratch. In part 1 I'm talking about planing a site. In part 2, I'm showing how to make a subtheme from Bootstrap theme. 

Before digging deeper in site customization, I'm willing to show how to tune a little bit up Drupal administrative tasks. By default (out of box) Drupal is not very user friendly for making admin related tasks. But it can be easily solved by adding few (actually just one module)

Administration menu:

From creators:

Provides a theme-independent administration interface (aka. navigation, back-end). It's a helper for novice users coming from other CMS, a time-saver for site administrators, and useful for developers and site builders.

Administrative links are displayed in a CSS/JS-based menu at the top on all pages of your site. It not only contains regular menu items — tasks and actions are also included, enabling fast access to any administrative resource your Drupal site provides.

• Download Admin_menu
• Extract to sites/all/modules
• Enable it from modules page

Building a Drupal site from scratch - part 2 - Applying a subtheme

2 November, 2013 | Drupal Development | 17 seen

Recently I started a tutorial series - How to build a Drupal site from scratch. In part 1 I'm talking about planing a site. In this tutorial I'm giving a real example for building a tourism companies web site for real customer.

In part we learned that it's a wise to create a content type, which best describe products/services we gonna add (in our example tours).

So I have added few tours to our site:

As you can see from picture above, I'm using default Drupal bartik theme. Now is the right time to change it, and start building our own theme.

For this I'm gonna use Bootrap theme, to serve all files, and sub-theme, to theme for our needs. Whats so special in Bootstrap? It's responsive! 

Lets make a sub-theme from Bootstrap:

• Download Bootstrap theme
• Extract it to sites/all/themes folder
• Download Jquey_update module
• Extract Jquery_update module to sites/all/modules folder
• Enable Jquery_update module from modules page
• Enable Bootstrap theme from site appearance page and set as default theme

• From Bootsrtap theme folder copy bootstrap_subtheme to your theme root folder
• Rename bootrap_theme as you like - mycustomtheme, for example
• Open mycutomtheme folder (we just renamed it), find bootstrap_subtheme.info.starterkit, rename thi file to mycustomtheme.info
• Open mycutomtheme.info file in notepad++ or any file editor program
• Change name from Bootstrap Sub-theme to My Custom Theme

Today will be announced new Prime minister of Georgia

2 November, 2013 | Living in Georgia | 4 seen

Recently I wrote an article about Georgian press discussing whether the new Prime Minister of Georgia will be David Seergenko.

To this day Georgian Press, has already 3 candidates: David Sergeenko, Irakly Gariabshvili and Giorgi Kvirikashvili.

As I wrote about Georgian president candidates before elections -  I had no clue who is who - so I can confirm, I have no idea who are these guys except some of these or somebody else, will be appointed by Bidzina Ivanishvili (current PM of Georgia).

Either I should interest more about Georgian politics, either - it actually doesn't matters?