Author: Mitch Keeler

I know we have a lot of webmasters that take advantage of WordPress, so I wanted to inform you all that WordPress 2.6 is out now and ready for install. Now before you overlook this as a meaningless upgrade, I can promise you it is nothing of the sort. Here are only some of the improvements WordPress 2.5 has over WordPress 2.6:

• Word count! Never guess how many words are in your post anymore.
• Image captions, so you can add sweet captions like Political Ticker does under your images.
• Bulk management of plugins.
• A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
• Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
• Plugin update notification bubble.
• Customizable default avatars.
• You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
• Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
• Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
• Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
• You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
• Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

Here is a video tour of the new and exciting WordPress 2.6 features:

You can download WordPress 2.6 here: http://wordpress.org/download/

Also looks like somebody has already found the easter egg in it too. For those of you using cPanel/Fantastico to manage your install and upgrades, the upgrade for you might not come for a couple of more weeks.

Are you excited about WordPress 2.6 yet?