Daily designer news

WordPress news: january 19 to january 26, 2013

Posted: 25 Jan 2013 08:12 PM PST

WordPress has become a tool used by millions of designers for much more than creating blogs. Each week we take a look at what's new with WordPress.

Plugins

Music Store

Create an online store to sell your audio files. Check it on WordPress.org.

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DebugWP

A plugin to help developers debugging their WordPress sites. The plugin adds a little toolbar for administrators at the bottom of every page to help you identify eventual problems. Check it out on WordPress.org.

Themes

Panels

Free theme with customizable header and background. Comes with square thumbnails for each post, custom menu and widget ready. Get it on Kettle themes.

panels

News

WordPress 3.5.1 released

A security and maintenance release that fixes 37 bugs. As usual, you should upgrade your WordPress installs to keep your website bugless and safer. You can see a list of the bugs fixed by this update here. Via Weblog Tools collection.

WordPress vs Envato: the licensing war

WordPress has been very strict in enforcing GPL licenses on derivative work, which is a pretty good thing to keep the open-source nature of the project. Recently ThemeForest, the Envato marketplace, authors have been barred from participating in Wordcamps because of the licensing system used by the marketplace they are selling on. To get a more accurate overview of the issue, check these posts: 1 – 2 – 3.

As an open source advocate, I would side with WordPress.org on that issue. As much as I love Envato and the great work they have done so far, I think they should comply with the GPL. My only regret is that WordPress.org has been so agressive towards authors on that issues, I think a more proper to deals with the issue would have been to encourage the authors to remove their work from the Envato marketplaces, then to help them promote their work and keep on selling. In my opinion it would be a better way to keep those talents contributing. To be continued…

WebhostingBuzz Competition: Win Web Hosting for a Year

You should enter, WebhostingBuzz is a great webhost. Participate at WPLift.

Tutorials and snippets

Canonical snippets

Easily clean up 404 errors and other misdirected HTTP traffic for better SEO. Several snippets on WP Mix.

Coolest Gadgets and Gizmos