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Notes on General Blogger Customization (Theme-Independent)

Quick Info Pages Gadget vs Link List Gadget For Blogger menu for this blog, I found that the Pages gadget does not reliably preserve custom menu labels . When a page linked via the Pages gadget was updated or republished, at least at times, if not all times, Blogger automatically reset the menu entry text to the page title , overriding any custom label previously set. I use custom labels that are shorter than the longish page titles for this blog's menu. So this auto reset by Blogger of these custom labels was a problem. To avoid this issue, I switched to using a Link List gadget for this blog's menu. That is not altered when the linked page is edited or saved. Menu Spacing Workaround Using a Dummy Entry Blogger menus created using either the Pages or Link List gadgets can render menu items with very little vertical spacing , making it difficult to visually distinguish between multi-line and single-line menu entries. Since Blogger does not provide a built-in option to cont...
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Notes on Development of Gita Static JSON files API hosted on GitHub Pages

This post is related to followings posts: Creating Gita API: Static JSON files API hosted on GitHub Pages; Regular REST and GraphQL APIs using SQL DB - ChatGPT , Dec. 2025 Are any persons interested in sponsoring software development for free Gita JSON files API hosted on free-tier GitHub Pages? , Dec. 2025 Quick Info Gita Static JSON API GitHub project GitHub pages (JSON files) site and usage: https://ravisiyer.github.io/gita-data/v1/{filename}.json E.g. https://ravisiyer.github.io/gita-data/v1/chapters.json fetches Gita chapters metadata as JSON data. datajson branch of frontend Nextjs Gita project is the development branch for using above JSON API. Details On 5 Jan. 2026, a donor expressed interest in sponsoring first 20 man-hour chunk of work for this project. I started that work on the next day, 6 Jan. 2026. As of now at least, this post has minimal details info. ... ============= ============= 08 January 2026 On Vercel, new git branch (datajson branch of gita Nextjs frontend pr...
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Timestamp Tracker app is now live on Google Play

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My first Android app on Google Play has been published and is now live. It is a small, free utility app to easily record timestamps and see the duration taken for tasks, with the interval from the previous timestamp shown automatically. The app is called Timestamp Tracker and is available on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ravisiyer.timestamptracker On my Samsung M21 (Android) phone, the app download size is only 8.4 MB. The Google Play publication process for 'new developers' (I am a 'new developer' on Google Play Console) was quite involved and time consuming. But it is the main store for Android apps. Note that I had previously published this app on Uptodown store as an APK  (in June 2025) but that requires sideloading the APK and navigating through warnings shown by Android, which would be a major problem for many Android users. So I had to bite the bullet and go through the rather long-drawn publication process on Google Play .
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Notes on creating a new Blogger blog from another Blogger blog's Google Takeout backup

Quick Info To create a new Blogger blog from another Blogger blog's Google Takeout backup (new Takeout blog backup and not old all in one XML file backup): Create a new Blogger blog. Restore theme and layouts, using Theme -> Restore and providing theme-layouts.xml file of other Blogger blog backup folder as input to it. Restore posts, pages and comments, using Settings -> Import content -> Import and providing feed.atom file of other Blogger blog backup folder as input to it. Back up or import your blog,  https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/41387?hl=en  clearly states that it is feed.atom or older xml backup files that have to provided as input to "Import posts, pages & comments to your blog".  Details Ref: Blogger Text LMS Backup-Restore I have created a very simple content/presentation only LMS using Blogger with minor customization of its Contempo Light theme. The blog was created under one of my Google userIds which I am referring to as rG user...
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Notes on creating a small test LMS with limited functionality but free hosting, using a Blogger theme (template)

Last updated on 12 Jan. 2026 Related previous post Free/Low-cost LMS (Education app) for small NGOs: Blogger Templates vs WordPress Plugins vs Moodle , 29 Dec. 2025 =========================================================== Quick Info Development Test LMS:  dravilms.blogspot.com/ Initial Test LMS:  ravilms.blogspot.com If I deploy a simple LMS site with a third-party theme then if there are some bugs, if I do not have a good knowledge of the theme code, I will find it very difficult to fix the bugs. Also the theme license, including license in its code, should be a suitable license for my needs. This post covers my exploration of using Google provided Blogger theme Contempo Light and doing some customization of it for a test LMS. All gadgets are widgets, but not all widgets are gadgets. Gadget = UI-manageable widget. A widget is any <b:widget> instance in the theme XML that has an ID, renders content and participates in Blogger’s rendering pipeline. Blogger uses th...
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