Blog Archive: July 2020

How To Exlude URL's Form Google AdSense Auto Ads

4 July, 2020 | Blogging | 13 seen

Google AdSense auto ads have been available for some time already, in the past I have used them with mixed success. 

Fast forward to 2020 and I decided to give them another shot. But there was one thing worrying me - I don't want to show Google Ads on every single page, and I want to take control of it. As my blog is built with Drupal, in the past I have used a few tricks to get what I want. 

Auto ads offer a simple and innovative way for you to monetize your content. With Auto ads, you place one piece of code on all pages across your site. Auto ads will then scan your site and automatically place ads where they’re likely to perform well and potentially generate more revenue.

Google offers excluding specific URLs for showing auto ads on.

The first step I decided to set up and run Google Auto Ads for a couple of days, and then use Google Analytics to filter out URLs with most AdSense views/clicks (You should connect both AdSense and Analytics to have such feature)

Filtering pages with most Google AdSense views /clicks in Google Analytics

Now there are 4 pages from top 10 pages I don't want Google Ads be shown,…

How To Create a Custom Drupal 8 Theme based on Bootstrap

3 July, 2020 | Drupal Development | 43 seen

When building a new Drupal website I prefer working with a Bootstrap theme and apply a subtheme 

Just like in the case with Drupal 7, theming a subtheme based on Bootstrap is super simple - in a few words - download and enable a Drupal 8 bootstrap theme, then in the Drupal themes folder create a new theme folder and make a custom info.yml file

here is a live example from OptionsBrew.com theme

• in the themes folder, create a new folder -> optionbrew
• in the optionbrew folder create a new file - > optionsbrew.info.yml

in the optionsbrew.info.yml file paste following:

Save the file and clear the…

Happy Kids Saldus

2 July, 2020 | Entertainment | 14 seen

Happy Kids Saldus is a cool kid's amusement park in the town of Saldus, Latvia.

I first read about in on a local Latvian Daily Business newspaper, and soon as I had the chance took our baby girl to play here.

Amusement park "Happy Kids" at the Saldus bypass road has created a place to celebrate children's parties and other holidays.

Happy Kids indoor amusement park in Saldus

We visited this park on March 2020, back then the entrance fee was like EUR3/h per kid or EUR 5 for 2 hours. 

Popular party place for kids parties in the area

Playground for the little ones (toddlers)

June 2020 Dividend Income Report - $82.11

1 July, 2020 | Investments | 11 seen

Welcome to the thirty-eight (#38) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks and peer to peer lending in June 2020.

Just like the previous months, the last June we also spent in a self-isolation (because of Covid-19) here in Georgia. More of the strict lockdown measurements were lifted (inner tourism, restaurants and hotels were opened for public)  we did a few weekend trips with an overnight stay at local resorts here in Georgia.  Baby girl is started to attend her pre-school, she is doing great - talking a lot, putting together sentences, mixing languages, figuring out new words. Awesome. Quite fascinating what a 23-month-old can do. Development is very rapid.

Lopota Lake resort in Georgia

From the perspective of dividend income -  last June was very bad, we barely took $82.11, most of our dividends are trimmed or halted for now. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but relying on dividends these days is very hard.

Compared to the previous June in 2019, when we almost took $300 in dividend income,…