Postcards from Crete

1 July, 2018 | | 6 seen

It has been now over a year since we visited the Greek island of Crete, during the past months I've already documented many stories from this trip. In today's Piece of Life series - one of the last days on the island back in 2017.

Town in Crete

The town is most probably Argiroupoli, as somewhere in this area we enjoyed a cup of coffee, see: Palios Mylos Restaurant Review near Argiroupoli Springs, Crete

Rural Crete

See: Discoveries in Crete - Rough Road To Balos Beach

Narrow roads in Crete

See: Crazy, Stupid, Love - Tranquil Rough Adventures in Crete

Mountainous Crete

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…

Talsi Regional Museum

27 June, 2018 | Museums | 19 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 | 6 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 | 89 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.

• 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…

How To Configure Trusted Host settings for Drupal 8 Website

21 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 41 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:

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:

How To Setup Google Analytics For Drupal 8 Website

17 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 41 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…

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

15 June, 2018 | Drupal Development | 13 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.

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…

Buying a Vineyard in Georgia

14 June, 2018 | Living in Georgia | 204 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…

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. 

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 | 30 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…