Just like every other blogger out there, I’m always on the look out for a new release of Wordpress.  I enjoy blogging very much, but the technical part has always been my favorite hobby.  There is no better way to do that but to install new wordpress sites for customers or upgrade my own with the latest release.

Wordpress 2.6 has been in the works for a short while, and now Beta 1 is available.  Ryan Boren has an article about this and here are the new features that he lists:

• Post Revisioning (see article here)
• A “Press This” bookmarklet for tumblelog style quick posting
• Caching of static files with Gears for faster Admin page loads
• A new and improved image editing dialog that offers lots of control over the images in your posts
• Theme previewing as seen on WordPress.com
• Built-in word counting in the post editor
• The ability to disable remote publishing for the security conscious
• XML-RPC API for changing blog options
• Better SSL support for the Admin
• Hierarchy-aware paging in the Manage Pages and Manage Categories admin pages.
• The ability to relocate your content directory
• The ability to move wp-config.php out of your web root
• Drag-and-drop sortable galleries
• Customizable default avatars
• Bulk delete, activate, and deactivate for plugins
• Check box range selection with shift-click
• TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes
• jQuery 1.2.6 with some nice performance improvements
• jQuery UI 1.5
• Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements

The ability to keep multiple versions of the same article is certainly a feature that has been asked for over and over again and there are a few other features in there that I will be happy to have without using a plugin.  Version 2.5 was a major release because it was a drastic upgrade from previous versions, but 2.6 simply adds to an already excellent and complete package with more features and bugfixes.

I don’t recommend installing Beta 1 on a production server, but if you have a test environment that you can use, definitely give it a try and let them know if you find anything fishy.  The final release is set for mid-July 2008.