Blog Archive: September 2016
Few Tips Before Launching Your First Web Push Notification Campaing
| Blogging | 3 seen
Web push notifications have been around for a while already. Chances are, if you are reading this article, you have already implemented them on your website or at least you are planing to do it soon. Continue reading and I will reveal how did it go for my first web push notifications campaign.
In fact I'm new to web push notifications. I first installed and enabled web push notifications for my blog just few days ago. See: How To Setup Web Push Notifications for Drupal or Any Site using PushEngage. In four days I gathered 300 subscribers and first campaign was sent out.
Get a free account at PushEngage (Free for up to 2500 subscribers)
Here are few tips (observations) after my first sent campaign:
Dashboard at PushEngage
My idea for push notifications at start was simple - set and forget - let me explain. PushEngage offers to use RSS auto push feature, which basically means - enter RSS feed once and set all to auto mode. I was looking for following behavior - RSS auto push will grab the title from article, and description. As of now - PushEngage doesn't offers options to use thumbnail from post, so I…
How To Sync Drupal RSS Feed to Mailchimp
| Drupal Development | 22 seen
RSS is not dead, it's more than alive - nowadays it's used to sync content across services and devices.
After finishing installing push notifications for my blog I decided to re-check my e-mail marketing strategy. Wow, it's hard to compare actually - I got about 200 push notifications subscribers in less than 3 days, while my attempts of collecting e-mails turned out to be more gloomy - about 60 subscribers in 3 months (after which I stopped to collect e-mail addresses at all). Not to speak about crafting and editing each newsletter.
I decided to make my e-mail marketing strategy more simple and more aggressive. By saying simple - I would like to be it fully automated, by saying aggressive - to send out more often . Let me explain - use to I sent a newsletter campaign once in a month and spent few hours crafting each campaign. Now, I want to send a newsletter once a week, and not spend much time crafting each campaign. I'm looking for set and forget setup.
I have changed my mindset a bit as well - if in the past I looked on e-mail marketing as on way to sell (I doubt I…
How to List Drupal Child Terms on Taxonomy Pages with Views
| Drupal Development | 73 seen
I spent a good amount of time at Monday's evening to actually figure this out. In today's Drupal Tutorial - How to List Drupal Child Terms on Taxonomy Pages with Views.
This issue has been on my table for about two years.
For the ease of this tutorial - here is basic setup. For a content type blog I have created pre-defined vocabulary - Category. Most of the category items are not related and are in linear format. But few of them are related and I have listed them as child terms.
Pre-defined category in Drupal
The tricky part is how to display child terms under parent taxonomy page - let's say a visitor is visiting parent category page - Tourism Objects and we would like to feature a little sub-menu with child terms, like airports, shopping venues e.t.c.
I tried many modules and solutions, but decided to stick with a simple views configuration using attachment feature.
Drupal taxonomy page views to list child termsIn following example I have actually extended a little bit usability by displaying count for…
How To Setup Web Push Notifications for Drupal or Any Site using PushEngage
| Drupal Development | 62 seen
Push Notifications seems are hot and worth to invest trend nowadays. I have seen them around for about last 6 months in blogs, portals and other websites.
In fact I have always chose to block them, when popped in my Chrome Browser, as I think they might be annoying. On the other hand as a blogger with pretty solid audience (more than 55,000 unique monthly users) I have wandered maybe it's worth to explore them more and implement on my blog?! As I see it now - web push notifications could help me to increase repeat visitors and page views, that's the reason I finally opted in and implemented web push notifications.
In todays Drupal development series - How To Setup Push Notifications for Drupal or Any Site using PushEngage.
PushEngage (Image courtesy: PushEngage.com)
Here is the fun fact - my smartphone have been broken for about 2 weeks (glass is broken), and I haven't repaired it or bought a new one - I didn't had a smartphone to perform my tests on. But I had a great partner and bug fixer in the other part of the world - my dad. I would…
'Delicious Ravioli' on Tumanyan street in Yerevan
| Restaurant reviews | 22 seen
Delicious Ravioli on Tumanyan street in Yerevan, Armenia serves a traditional Georgian cuisine. Actually this is a typical khikali place and I still wonder why this place is called a Ravioli place instead of Khinkali, as in Russian language sign - this place is still called Tasty Khinkali. Strange.
Anyway, as usually when abroad I search for a Georgian cuisine. Last time I visited Georgian Tavern in Tallinn, Estonia, today was Yerevan's turn. Another evening, another Yerevan restaurant.
We visited Delicious Ravioli just shortly we returned from Khor Virap monastery complex.
Delicious Ravioli
This restaurant is located in basement, and you must look really carefully to find it.
Interior at Delicious Ravioli
Pretty good and stylish. Very red :)
Khinkali at Delicious Ravioli place
The Bottom LineFood was good, really good prepared khinkali accompanied with Georgian Saperavi lemonade. Budget? Don't recall exactly but pretty affordable. Would love to return.
Khor Virap Monastery Complex in Armenia
| Churches and Monasteries | 67 seen
The Khor Virap is an Armenian monastery located in the Ararat plain in Armenia, near the closed border with Turkey, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of Artashat, Ararat Province. The monastery was host to a theological seminary and was the residence of Armenian Catholicos.
Located some 30 km from nations capital Yerevan, Khor Virap is best reached by organized tours, personal vehicle or by hiring a taxi. I have kept contacts from good old taxi driver Tom, which we met first when arranged a tour to Etchmiadzin cathedral, Tom wasn't available today but agreed to send his friend Misha. Here is a catch - the reason we decided to visit Kor Virap was to catch an awesome sunset (Golden Hour) photography. Misha picked us up at our Yerevan Park Hotel about an hour before sunset.
Khor Virap monastery and mount Ararat
There is a cemetery located just before the monastery complex. As we arrived some 30 minutes earlier, we made a stop here, and I started to install equipment.
Khor Virap's notability as a monastery and pilgrimage site is attributed to the fact that …
Tashir Pizza (On Mashtots Avenue, Yerevan)
| Restaurant reviews | 21 seen
I first heard about Tashir Pizza back in Tbilisi (Georgia), the girls from local community informed that there is a famous Armenian pizza coming to the town - I had no clue what does famous Armenian Pizza stands for, so I visited my first Tashir pizzeria at Tbilisi East Point mall - read my review here: Tashir Pizza at EastPoint Mall (Tbilisi)
Now, couple of months latter we were on a short few day trip to Armenia, and Tashir name popped up again, we were sitting at our cozy Park hotel room and decided to go for a walk and look for the brand. We hadn't to walk too long as first popped soon we left our hotel and headed to Mashtots Avenue.
Tashir pizza on lively Mashtots avenue in Yerevan
Popular place
Literally everyone loves Tashir Pizza in Armenia, from young to old, from seniors to businessman. And Tashir Pizza has an offer for everyone - it definitely is not an expensive place. This place is a budget on steroids type of place (really rare you can see such venues - it is either cheap and bad, or bad and cheap) Tashir Pizza is cheap and good!
…
Armenian Wedding
| | 10 seen
In today's Piece of Life photo series - Armenian Wedding, no not mine big fat Armenian Weddings, but a candid street photography from Yerevan.
It all probably started at Yerevan's Brandy Factory, after visiting which we returned back to the old town by foot and noticed a crowd gathering near church. Yup, they were waiting for the bride and groom.
So did we.. I quickly changed glass to telephoto and decided to experiment - yes your are right with the candid street photography. Wide apertures and amazing models.
Wedding limousine
Taxi driver without enthusiasm
Wedding guests
...and police
I captured both the bride and groom, but decided to keep their privacy and not to publish their images (well, I was just a passer by with a telephoto lens, and not an invited guests)
Yerevan Brandy Factory Ararat
| Tourism objects | 122 seen
This post is about Yerevan Brandy Company producing famous Ararat brandy.
During my latest trip to Yerevan (Armenia) I had a free time and I decided to to visit Yerevan Brandy Factory. So, we just walked there by foot, and huge was our surprise when the girl at reception informed that tours can be arranged only by calling before - that's lame. But OK, if you are planing to make an indie trip to Yerevan Brandy Factory - make sure you contact them prior or you will be left with the same we got - wandering around at a small brandy kiosk at entrance, instead of taking a tour inside factory, observing all those oak barrels or even tasting brandy.
Ararat - Yerevan brandy company
Yerevan Brandy Company (YBC) is the leading enterprise of Armenia for the production of alcoholic beverages. Its main brand name is Ararat. Currently the company boasts a large following, particularly in Russia, as well as in Ukraine and Belarus. The Russian market accounts for about 85% of exports.YBC is owned and operated by the French giant Pernod Ricard.
Lada Niva with Ararat…
Yerevan Opera Theatre
| Tourism objects | 44 seen
It took me about 4 or 5 times to visit Yerevan, before I actually visited Yerevan Opera theater. OK, in fact I didn't even visited it, just passed by, but the Opera House is a popular landmark when wandering around Yerevan.
Here is the fun fact - The ground-breaking of the Opera-Theatre took place on 28 November 1930 during the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of Soviet Armenia.
Armenian National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet named after Alexander Spendiaryan in Yerevan was officially opened on 20 January 1933, with Alexander Spendiaryan's Almast opera performance.
Yerevan Opera Theater
The last time we visited Yereavan, and had a chance to see Yerevan's Opera house was back in the March (2016) - warm clothes and still grey tree's. But this day some manifest was held in fron of the Opera house - at least there were a lot of Armenian flags.
The opera building was designed by the Armenian architect Alexander Tamanian. It consists of two concert halls: the Aram Khatchaturian concert hall with 1,400 seats and the…
How to Upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04 LTS
| Servers | 39 seen
In this article I will provide simple instructions on how to upgrade Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04.
In fact I didn't wanted to push for a server upgrade for a while, but decided to do it now, and not to wait when things will break completely. In fact I was working on a Drupal 8 site development and wanted to have it on more recent version of server, and so I opted to upgrade whole server. Following tutorial is inspired from How to Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
BackupsI highly suggest you to take a snapshot of your current server, before pushing for your upgrade. I have Linode backups enabled and before proceeding further I took a snapshot. It was pretty fast less than 5 minutes to generate a backup for all of mine server.
Stopping servicesIt's recommended that you stop as many services as possible before upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. This includes web server daemons (Apache and nginx), database servers (PostgreSQL and MySQL), and any other non-critical services.
sudo service nginx stopI opted to stop nginx
Upgrade your Linode to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS by entering the following command: sudo do-release-upgrade -d…
How To Enable PHP Curl Ngnix (Good for Social share counters)
| Servers | 288 seen
Today I was eager to install and enable really cool Drupal module for my blog - Social Share Counter, this module looked simple - all I had to do, just download, enable and a little bit tweak around.
From module creator (s)
This module gives the share counts for only Facebook,Twitter and more which has some excellent features in more elegant manner. If you have a website, then you definitely need this module.
Unfortunately, after I successfully installed and enabled this module I noticed that share count is not increasing for my articles (I had one article - with more than 5,000 shares and likes today, it felt lame seeing fat zero, while my default Facebook plugin showed it correctly)
I noticed from recent log messages following notice:
Notice: Use of undefined constant CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER - assumed 'CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER' in _social_share_counter_parse() (line 254 of /srv/www/reinisfischer.com/public_html/sites/all/modules/social_share_counter/social_share_counter.module).
And I got it - most probably I didn't install php5-curl when did setup last time this server, see…
How to Upgrade PHP 5.3 to 5.5.9 on Ubuntu 12.04 to Support Drupal 8
| Servers | 13 seen
That day finally have come and I've officially started a new project on my first Drupal 8 website. While my first attempts were about two years ago, but due to the lack of time and will to explore new things and configure new servers I proceeded just tonight (after a conversation with a long time customer we agreed to make a re-branded website and I was allowed to "experiment" with a Drupal 8 site)
I took me some time to get it running as I wasn't prepared for the Drupal 8 requirements, and one of them, is to run on at least PHP 5.5.
I have two linodes configured - one for this blog only and second for all the other websites. Both boxes are configured on Ubuntu 12.04, which is shipped with the php 5.3 version, and of course Nginx. They run smooth for Drupal 7, but speaking for Drupal 8 it took me about an hour to get things right. I got too many 502 bad gateway and 500 internal errors, while I found this great article: Upgrading PHP to 5.4 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to support Drupal 8.
The idea is to keep Ubuntu 12.04 (for a while), but upgrade php version onlyOptional: The add-apt-…
The Swan Lake park in Yerevan
| Tourism objects | 32 seen
The Swan lake park in Yerevan is a popular recreation area in the heart of Yerevan, located next to the Opera house in a 5 minute walking distance from main Republic Square.
The Swan Lake park usually hosts various open air art exhibitions. - Ice-skate with many locals at the Swan Lake (next to the Opera House) during winter months.
The huge guitar and piano at the entrance of the Swan park
I visited Swan park in the middle of March, it was still grey all around, but the green decors made it much better.
Sculpture
Sorry - can't tell more about it - probably very famous Armenian composer? Leave a comment if you have more information.
Swan Lake park
No water yet. I presume that during Summer months, this place just rocks. Of course I believe there are water during season.
Advertisement and benches
Postcards from Yerevan (Spring)
| | 4 seen
Back at the March 2016, we made a short, but very remarkable trip to Armenia and of course its capital Yerevan. In today's Piece of Life series - a day from Spring in the city of Yerevan.
Republic Square in Yerevan
Read more detailed article about the Republic Square of Yerevan.
View towards mount Ararat
Architecture in Yerevan city center
Sculpture in Yerevan's park
Advertisement in Yerevan
Panoramic view of Yerevan
In the background - Yerevan's brandy factory - Ararat, more on that in some of the future articles