WordPress version 2.6 has just been released and I’ve taken the opportunity to upgrade my test installation and start looking at some of the great new features that have been included.  While there are loads of new goodies under the hood (including 194 bug fixes) I’m going to dedicate this post to some of the more up front improvements that will help bloggers on a regular basis.

Post Revisions

WordPress now has the ability to display a Wiki-style history of changes to your blog posts.  The Post Revisions can be found at the very bottom of the editor.

This displays the post and a list of the times it was saved (whether automatically or manually).

You can then delete revisions, or compare two of them to see what changed between them.

Press This!

Press This is an easy way to make quick posts to your block using a shortcut or bookmark on your browser toolbar.  You’ll find the Press This shortcut at the right of the editor.

On any web page when you press the Press This bookmark it will open a popup menu with a new blog post filled out with the details of the page you were visiting.

If the page you are visiting is a Youtube video or Flickr photo, the post will automatically embed the correct code for posting that content in your blog.

In short, it is a great way to quickly post interesting pages, videos, and photos to your blog.

Word Count

This new feature will be particularly handy for professional bloggers being paid by the word, or just any blogger who tries to keep their content to around a certain word count.  The editor window will now show the word count for your post over near the Save/Publish buttons.  I’ve noticed though that it only shows it after a carriage return, so if you’re typing long paragraphs you won’t see it updating the word count.

Image Captions

Images bring a blog to life, and this new feature brings it to a whole new level.  When posting images in your blog posts you can now include a caption beneath each image.  This will be great for photo blogs or “how to” posts that include lots of screenshots.

The captions also appear under thumbnails in image galleries.

Improved Image Control

In addition to captions the image controls have been given a real boost.  To begin with you can now drag and drop the order of images in the gallery.

By hovering your mouse over an image in the editor you can access the new image editing controls.

These new controls make it much easier to resize and re-align images that you have inserted into your blog posts, something that was not very intuitive in version 2.5.

Plugin Management

For bloggers who are constantly trying out new plugins there are a couple of new features that make life easier.  For starters the WordPress admin page will now notify you when there are updates for any of your installed plugins.

The Plugins management page has also been split into actived and deactivated plugins, as well as adding some bulk management options.

Theme Previews

Finally for bloggers who are developing or testing new themes for their sites WordPress 2.6 includes theme previews, so that you can check how your site will look without having to enable a theme for all visitors.

When you click on a theme it launches an alternate URL to display a preview of your site with the selected theme.

Conclusion

While there are many more new features in WordPress 2.6 I have demonstrated those that will have the biggest impact on many bloggers.  WordPress continues to develop into a richer and more powerful CMS as each version is released.  Now I’m off to start upgrading my blogs, and to start testing out some of the other new features that have been added.