Magic Fish - Tbilisi Restaurant

20 May, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 43 seen

Magic Fish is another interesting restaurant I've discovered in Tbilisi (see complete list with Tbilisi restaurant reviews). The fun fact is following, I had seen this place countless times by passing it by on lively Aghmeneshabeli avenue, but never thought, there is a restaurant located inside.

As flashy banner, and kind of strange name lead me to think there is some disco bar or something. Turns out I was wrong, and Magic Fish actually is a decent seafood restaurant in Tbilisi.

I was taken here actually by friend, I met at gym, see Champions academy in Tbilisi.

Shrimps

Fish

Hard Rock Cafe Tbilisi

19 May, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 44 seen

I've found one of my favorite Tbilisi restaurants - meet Hard Rock cafe Tbilisi, located on lively Vasil Petrashvili street 1, near Tbilisi Philharmonic building.

Hard Rock Cafe Tbilisi, in fact is first Hard Rock cafe I've ever visited, but now I know, there is a good reason to visit them around the World.

Hard Rock Cafe Tbilsi

​Located steps away from Casino Sakartvelo in the historical Vera District of Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia), our brand-new cafe combines the modern style of the Hard Rock brand with a sense of local history. Hard Rock Cafe Tbilisi is located within a restored wine factory, which was originally built in 1896 by famous Georgian industrialist and philanthropist David Sarajisvili, who is known as the founder of brandy production in Georgia. In fact, our building is listed as a cultural heritage site.

Fish & Chips

Amazingly well done, I had a chance to try fish & chips in US based Red Robin place, well the one you can get in Tbilisi is 100 times better than that at New Jersey's Red Robbin. 

Delicious Oreo biscuit cake

Now, that was stunning.

Drupal 8 Custom Taxonomy Term Pages with Views

18 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 208 seen

By default, out of the box, Drupal taxonomy term pages are styled kind of ugly, but with the help of just a few simple tweaks, we could style them as we wish, just by using CSS. In today's Drupal tutorial series, I will provide a simple how-to on how to create custom Drupal 8 taxonomy term pages using views.

Luckily, you won't need to install any additional modules, as in Drupal 8, views are already built in the core, and if you are already familiar with how to style taxonomy term pages in Drupal 7, it will be an easy task in Drupal 8, as most of the steps involved are the same.

Although this aticle was writtne for Drupal 8, most of it still applies in Drupal 9 and Drupal 10 versions. If you need any help with configuring Drupal taxonomy pages I might be just the person you're looking for. As the founder of Terramatris.eu, a Drupal development agency, I have years of experience working with this platform and helping clients achieve their goals through custom Drupal installations. Learn more at Terramatris.eu

Default taxonomy term page view in Drupal 8

In the above example, you can see the default taxonomy term page view (taxonomy/term/%) in Drupal 8. For this tutorial, I'm using Tourgeorgia.eu website, listing tours in Georgia where each tour is tagged with predefined taxonomy, for example, cultural tour, spiritual tour, and so on.

Though technically speaking, taxonomy term pages are not the ones generating the most page views and in fact, are rarely visited, that doesn't mean we should leave a bad user experience. On the other hand, taxonomy term pages might be used in your Drupal's SEO strategy, and in case of that - even more, it's time to make them rock.

Drupal views for Taxonomy term pages

• Go to the views page (admin/structure/views), edit the Taxonomy term page
• Under Format, change display from Content to Fields
• Add fields, like title, body, image, and custom block
• Exclude all, but custom block fields from the display
• Construct your display in a custom block using replacement variables, you should add here CSS classes as well
• Apply CSS to your themes style sheet

Here is the final result

Custom Drupal 8 taxonomy term page

Now, looks much better. As you can see I have displayed additional custom fields on taxonomy pages as well, like price,  and even a direct link to the booking form. The sky is the limit when working with taxonomy term pages in Drupal.

Tip: If you are figuring out how to remove subscribe to RSS link from taxonomy term pages, go back to the taxonomy term page view, select feeds to display, and under the Feed setting remove Attach to Page

Now you have some basic knowledge of how to create custom Drupal 8 taxonomy term pages using views.

In case you are using more than just one vocabulary for taxonomy terms, you could create some additional rewrites per vocabulary. Personally, I prefer using just one taxonomy term page display, with most rewrites done already in views.

Like in the case of tourgeorgia.eu - we have two vocabularies, one for tour type and other tags in free format, using rewrites in Drupal view construct page it's not a problem to display on one page two different displays (see example)

Taxonomy terms from different vocabularies on the same taxonomy term page in Drupal

Here we can see two nodes, both tagged with Tbilisi, the first one is an article, and as you can see from the display it shows an image, title, description, and read more button, while the second is a tour, displaying additional info on the same taxonomy term page, tour type, duration, price, and booking.

When constructing a custom taxonomy view page, make sure to list all possible fields and then use the hide if empty option to rewrite the final result.

Another great feature of Drupal 8, is displaying taxonomy term descriptions on the taxonomy term page, out of the box. It was kind of complicated to get this done in Drupal 7, see: How to List Drupal Child Terms on Taxonomy Pages with Views

Taxonomy description in Drupal 8

There is nothing much you should do to print taxonomy term descriptions on the Drupal 8 taxonomy term page, just edit the taxonomy term and add a brief term description, the rest is handled by the taxonomy/term/% views page.

As you can see - the sky is the limit when dealing with taxonomy term pages in Drupal. If implemented with SEO strategy, well optimized taxonomy pages can help to improve overall site rankings in Google search. 

If you're in need of someone with expertise in Drupal development and module configuration, I might be just the person you're looking for. As the founder of Terramatris.eu, a Drupal development agency, I have years of experience working with this platform and helping clients achieve their goals through custom Drupal installations. Learn more at Terramatris.eu

EU Cookie Compliance For Drupal 8 Website

17 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 6 seen

I'm not an expert in EU laws, but as far as I remember since 2012 there have been passed a law, so called EU Cookie Compliance law, asking website located in the territory of European Union to provide cookie disclaimer to website visitors if any cookie installed on website. 

To play safe, I have enabled cookie information bar on my blog (you can see it in the bottom of each page)

As, recently I started Drupal 8 development on .eu domain website, which actually is hosted from EU territory I decided to wrap up a simple tutorial on best practice how to enable EU cookie compliance notification bar for Drupal 8 websites.

The good news, there is a special module to handle EU cookie directive: EU Cookie Compliance

This module intends to deal with the EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications that comes into effect in the UK on 26th May 2012. From this date on, you run the risk of enforcement action if you are not compliant or visibly working towards compliance. More information can be found here: Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002

The above information applies to the UK however the EU law will be enforced in all EU countries and hence the module can be used everywhere in the EU.

By enabling and configuring the module you will demonstrate to the regulator that you, as the owner of the website:

• are doing as much as possible to reduce the amount of time before your visitors receive information about cookies (information appears as soon as a visitor enters the site).
• are providing your visitors with options. (find out more about cookies, do not browse if you disagree).
• ensure that the information on cookies is readily available to your visitor(visible pop-up at the bottom of the screen).
• are visibly working towards compliance (even if you do not perform a full cookie audit, it's clear that some effort has been made).

Right, now when you are familiar how this module can help you:

• Download and enable EU Cookie Compliance module

Hope, it helps!

How to create related content block using taxonomy term in Drupal 8

16 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 73 seen

There is no secret that related content can help to improve over all page views for website. More page views means more engaged website visitors, resulting in more sales and higher profit.

In today's Drupal tutorial I will write how to make related content block using taxonomy term field in Drupal 8. For Drupal 7 tutorial see: Related nodes based on taxonomy terms

In short, if you are already familiar how to create related content block in Drupal 7, there is no huge difference in Drupal 8. If you are new to Drupal, keep reading.

Requirements:

• Content type with taxonomy term enabled. 

For this tutorial I will use live example from tourgeorgia.eu here we have content type Tour and attached taxonomy term field: Tour type. What we want to build is a related view listing related tours from the same category as given article, for example cultural tour.

Related taxonomy block in Drupal 8

You can see a live preview here

Drupal 8 views for related taxonomy term

Create a new content based block view - give it a nice name, Related Items (or something) add title, image and body fields to it. We will need to use 2 contextual filters. Id and Has taxonomy term id.

Configure Id filter as following:

• Provide default value: Content ID from URL
• Under More tab - Check next to Exclude

Configure Has taxonomy term id as following:

• Provide default value: Taxonomy term ID from URL
• Uncheck: Load default filter from term page
• Check next to: Load default filter from node page, that's good for related taxonomy block
• Multiple value handling: Filter to items that share any value
• Check next to Reduce Duplicates
• Under more tab check: Allow multiple values and Allow multiple values to work together.

That's it. Save your view (be sure you have created a block not page view). Now you just need to add block you just created to your sites theme region.

It is up to you have you will decide to theme your related items block. Sky is the limit for you creative work. You can add author field, date field, rating field.. so do you can add some filters to show most viewed related nodes content. In this example I gave to you, is just a basic to help you to get started for showing related item list on your Drupal powered site.

N.B. On my example Live preview from views page is not working, but it actually works when added to region in your theme.

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.

Adobe Lightroom

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

Adobe Premiere

The final comp was made in Adobe Premiere adding a sound effect (from free libraries)

I hope to apply my newly developed skills to make some nice star trails photography in the short future. My First Star Trail Photography

A tutorial for creating HDR images in Photoshop

12 May, 2017 | Digital Photography School | 65 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.

How to take source images for a final HDR image

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 photos of the same scene (just for having even more detail), so that we get one single photo with multiple light levels.

So, to take the source images – the ones you'll be combining – all you have to do is take the same photo with different exposure levels.

The best way to do this is to first fix your camera on a tripod and setup your composition. You don't want your camera moving, because then there will be no similar images to merge. Also, shoot in RAW for more latitude while processing the images in Photoshop, although the method works even for JPEGs.

Once your camera is ready, take a photo that is metered by the camera itself. Not under-exposed, not over-exposed. This image is your base image, and it is basically a photo that the camera will take if it was in Auto Mode.

Now, you need at least 2 more photos to merge them all into an HDR image. Change your shutter speed to change the exposure. If you change aperture, the depth of field will change, which will make some areas of your photo unwantedly blurry. Changing ISO is also possible, but try to avoid it so that you get a clean image with no noise.

Make sure you have an under-exposed image by 1 stop at least. You can also go further and take an image under-exposed by 2 stops. Do the same the other side. Over-expose the scene by a stop, and then by one more stop.

Now, you have 2 under-exposed, 2 over-exposed, and 1 base image. You could also have done this using an 'Auto Bracketing' feature if your camera has one. More the number of images, more the information available for the final merged HDR photo.

So, you have 5 images – or more – with different exposures, all with the same composition and still subjects. Keeping your camera stable is very important, otherwise the camera shake and movement of the subject will cause ghosting and will also make merging all images into one very tricky.

How to merge all images in Photoshop

Once you have the source images ready on your computer, you can open Photoshop and begin working on merging your images for HDR.

Merging HDR in Photoshop

1. Open Photoshop and choose File > Automate > Merge to HDR. Here, you will get the option of choosing all your source images.

2. If in case you are unsure about camera shake and think that there is some change in the composition in the source images, select the option “Automatically Align Source Images”.

3. When you click OK, the computer will process the files and you will have to wait for a few seconds. Now, choose the 32-bit depth for the highest amount of tonal range. 8-bit and 16-bit files cannot store the entire range of light.

4. Now, the image you will see is a 32-bit preview of the final image with the source images on the side. Check for some ghosting or weird movement in the shot and if there is any, remove the source image which has the movement in it.

5. The 32-bit preview has a lot of information, most of which your computer screen cannot show. So, make sure that you save this file for later use as a 32-bit (tiff, .pbm etc) HDR full of details.

6. The merged result is a floating-point 32-bit image. You can view the available tones by sliding the White Point slider. This slider won’t change the image, it is there for you to examine the range of tones, because a monitor is incapable of displaying the whole tonal range.

7. The 32-bit image will still seem darker than you may want, but once you convert it into a 16-bit or 8-bit image, it will start to look better. You'll need to use the 8-bit image for sharing and emailing and uploading it to social media.

8. Choose Image > Mode > 8-bit. Here, you'll get options to actually bring out the exact exposure you want. You’ll see an HDR Toning Dialog box, with 2 options – Exposure and Gamma.

9. If you want an image with lots of contrast, lower the gamma. For less contrast, raise the gamma. Finally, adjust the exposure to get the desired image. There will be other options like Local Adaptation, but these are advanced tools and need another article itself.

10. If you are happy with the image, just click OK and you are done. You can also make further edits like shadows, highlights and saturation. Experiment and try to see how these settings change your image.

This is all!

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.twig page
• Add custom code and CSS styling to Drupal views page

Update html.html.twig page

Locate html.html.twig page in your theme folder (if you don't have one yet, create it

Visit: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button#configurator and click Get Code button, you will get something like this:

Paste following code just after opening <body> tag in html.html.twig template, make sure you enter your APP ID

Save html.html.twig

Add custom code to Drupal 8 views

I'm going to add Facebook share and like buttons, but you could fine tune it according to your needs (follow examples here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-button#configurator)

Open your views display and add following code:

As you can see, I've added {{path}} field for getting actual URL. When adding path field, make sure you select use absolute url, to make it work together with Facebook Open Graph

Now you can add some CSS styling to position Facebook social buttons.

How To Add Open Graph Protocol For Drupal 8 Website

10 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 33 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 wall (no mater your personal or Facebook business page wall)

Open Graph not configured 

Out of the box Facebook share screen works already pretty good - it takes URL and nicely gets title from it. a short description is added and of course link back to your website. Though we have missing one important element - image - there are no image. And honestly speaking I would love to have better control of what is shared in the title section, I don't want | [site:name] shared in it. And maybe I would like to have a better control of what is written in description box. Do you find the same? Then, let's fix that, and here comes in open graph protocol.

Open Graph protocol for Drupal 8

If you have followed my article on How To Override Drupal 8 Frontpage Title, you already are familiar Metatag module, which will brilliantly handle all of the required work.

• Download and enable metatag module
• From admin/config/search/metatag select edit Content
• Scroll down to Open Graph settings
• Page URL: [node:url]
• Title: [node:title]
• Description: [node:body]
• For Image settings enter node[node:field_image], for displaying default image tag, if you are using custom image field, use browse available tokens to find field name

Open Graph image field settings for Drupal 8

Adjust Open Graph settings according to your needs. Click save for now

Save and make sure to clear cache, now visit Open Graph Debugger and test your URL. Follow on screen recommendations for any issues to fix.

Now here is how this post looks if shared on Facebook again

Open Graph debugger for Drupal 8

Much better!

How to send OneSignal RSS Push Notifications Using Zapier

7 May, 2017 | Blogging | 6 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 setup RSS to OneSignal.

That, kind of, reminds me good old days, when I was using Twitterfeed to sync my social media accounts from RSS feed, unfortunately Twitterfeed has been shut down, but again a new service, called dlvr.it emerged and replaced it.

If you are familiar with syncing RSS to social media accounts, settings up Zapier RSS to OneSignal will be a piece of cake for you. Follow this simple tutorial to get it done:

Send OneSignal push notifications for new RSS items

Let' s keep thing automated :)

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

6 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 41 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 push notifications. As this website is built by Drupal 8, in following tutorial I will provide details on how to setup web-push notifications for Drupal 8 website, but with a few minor tweaks this method should work for any other platform (WordPress, Joomla e.t.c.)

Now, if you don't have already onesginal account go and sign up for one (it's free).

Once you are registered for account, login and click on the a new add app screen to get started:

Add a new app screen onesignal

Next, give it a name (your website's name, for example), and click on the create button

You will be asked to select a platform to configure:

Selecting platform to configure on onesignal

Choose Website Push and click Next

On the next screen you will be asked to select either Google Chrome & Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari, for the start let's choose Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, you will have a chance to add Apple Safari later. Click Next.

Now, let's assume that you have already https:// site enabled (if not, see how easy you could setup a free SSL from Let's Encrypt), or if you don't have yet https:// site you could choose option - My Site is not fully HTTPS

Web push notification setting screen

Enter your site URL and provide a link to default notification icon URL (I like to keep all of my onesignal notification icons in a separate folder on the root, and I've created a folder named onesignal, you may use different approach.

Click Save

On the next screen you will be asked to select target SKD, if you are using Wordpress you could go with WordPress selection, for Drupal or any other site we are going to choose Website Push

Select target SDK on onesignal

Click Next

You are almost done here, now it's the part to install actual code on your site, for Drupal 8:

Visit Web Push SDK Setup (HTTPS) for download files

Download and unzip the SDK files.

You should have:

Upload these files to the root folder of your website

Edit manifest.json:

Change name and short_name to your site's name
Do not change the gcm_sender_id key (482941778795). This is a shared key used for push notifications (previously it required your own key, but this is no longer needed!)

change tourgeorgia.eu to your own website

Include and initialize the SDK

Open your html.html.twig template (if you don't have such, create it, as I didn't had html.html.twig but my template is based on bootstrap I just copied html.html.twig file from bootstartp template folder to my custom theme folder) and add following

 Include manifest.json in your themes <head> section

Now, you should go back to the onesignal homepage choose your app and browse for appId, you will find it under app settings, Keys & IDs, copy and paste to head section.

If you would like to show webpush subscribe button to every user accessing your website, and kind of aggressively, asking to subscribe to push notifications, you should change autoRegister value from false to true.

HTTPS Web Push notifications enabled on Drupal 8 site

You can try a live example here: tourgeorgia.eu

In some of the future posts I will write a brief tutorial how to actually send your first push notification using onesignal.

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

5 May, 2017 | Peer to Peer Lending | 76 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 as investors at Mintos.

Affiliate link here: Signup to Mintos.com here. By using this affiliate link for registration both you and I will receive — 1% of our average daily balance which should be paid in 3 installments for the first 90 days.

In total, during the past 3 months, from invested EUR 2,361.32 I've received in interest EUR 34.12 (after deducted currency exchange fees), statically speaking that would mean 1.44% year to date yield. 

I'm still building my million dollars saving account, and for 2017 I've decided to put aside $8,561, by now I've invested about 42% from that, and about $2,500 I've invested on Mintos (in several batches). Just recently I've started to build up my dividend stock portfolio, and I've invested some money in Baltic higher dividends paying stocks. Also some little money I've put in mutual funds, again in Baltics and Eastern Europe.

Investment portfolio April 2017

Mintos makes 69.2% from my total investment portfolio, followed by stocks in Nasdaq Baltics (25%) and mutual funds (5.8%)

As you can see by now Mintos makes the biggest part from my investment strategy, though for following months this year, I'm looking to increase investments in stocks and mutual funds. I would be happy ending this year with peer to peer lending contributing to my portfolio not more than 60%. In fact, as I believe, investments in peer to peer lending shouldn't be more than 20% from total portfolio. .As I'm just starting out right now, I feel I can afford greater risk (and hopefully greater interest)

My investment strategy on Mintos.com

I continue to invest in loans only with a buy back guarantee, which means, in case if loans go past due, loan originator would buy back bad loans, helping investors to avoid losing money. I tend to invest in shorter term (up to 3 month ) loans in Georgia, but have invested in long term (72 month) loans in Baltics and Poland also.

In April I had following currency portfolio: 849.79 EUR and 4,262.84 GEL, which is a great increase if compared my investment after first month here, as said I've deposited more money in several batches on Mintos. As I'm depositing money from Georgia based bank account in Georgian lari, I need to exchange money directly on platform, paying commission fee. I try to limit my currency exchange fees on platform to 10% from interest received.  In currency exchange fees I've paid GEL 19.55 , which equals to about EUR 7.34

Investments in Georgian lari

Investments in Georgian lari gives 17% interest rate with buy back guarantee, by now most of the earnings come from Georgian lari. In total I've got 77.86 lari in interest, what equals to about EUR 29.23

Investments in GEL (as on April 30, 2017)

Net annual return have increased to 15.06% as most of the loans in Georgian lari are set at 17% annually, which is a decent, due to the Georgian lari volatility against EUR and USD currencies, greater interest comes with a greater volatility, and thus it might be tempting to invest in Georgian lari only, I try to exchange Lari to EUR (allocating 10% from total interest received). Also, as I don't think such high interest rates will continue for long, I've started to invest in longer than 30 day short term loans, investing in up to 2 year loans in GEL trying to keep higher interest rate longer.

Investments in EUR

During the past 3 month I've received in interest EUR 12.68, which doesn't seems a lot right now, but on the other hand, total investment in EUR currency is relatively small.

Investments in EUR (as on April 30, 2017)

I plan to increase my investments in EUR currency slowly, it would be good to see about EUR 1,200 invested after another 3 month here. Which might generate about EUR 10 monthly, with interest rates as they are now. 

Again, I'm investing in buyback loans only, to push my interest rates higher I invest heavily in long term loans, including more than 72 month. 

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

4 May, 2017 | Servers | 23 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.

Install Postfix in 3 simple steps

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

Finally, restart postfix:

That's it! You are good to go!

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

3 May, 2017 | Travel guides | 7 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 public transport is very cheap, as we paid about $15 for a single ticket). Once in Philly, booked a lovely hotel in the downtown area (China town) just a few blocks away from Reading Terminal market. Philly is amazing for leisure, calm and tranquil. Highly recommend.

Returned to New York City, this time booked a luxury hotel near the Empire State building and enjoyed slow days in Manhattan, trying out local Asian cuisine.

Here I'm listing all major and interesting places we discovered this time in America.

Speaking of expenses, I didn't count after all, but now looking back it seems it was at about $4,000

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 module
• Under Metatag options (admin/config/search/metatag) scroll down to Front page settings
• Edit Page title, by entering your keywords 

Hope it helps!