A recent entry by Ryan Boren talks about the features that will be added to WordPress 2.6.  Some of them are performance-related or bug fixes, while there are also a number of features that some people will probably find useful.

One I’m glad to see listed is the ability to move wp-config.php out of the root directory of the webserver.  This file defines a number of mission-critical variables that are used by the rest of a WordPress installation, including the connection information for the MySQL database, information about the database schema and other things that you don’t want to have accessible to the general public because they can be used to exploit vulnerabilities in your system.  Fortunately, if your server is properly set up anyone trying to access it through conventional methods will get an empty file for their efforts.  But, if your server isn’t properly set up then it’s possible that they could get a copy of the information contained in it, which is a Bad Thing.

As well as the security tweaks, there is a feature to make it easier to track changes to entries called post revisioning.  Though I use Windows Live Writer to write most of my entries, this will still be handy.  And if you’re running a multi-author blog using WordPress, this will help you track changes made by different authors working on the same entry and even go back to a previous version, if necessary.

The next version is currently in the beta-testing stage and if you’re really keendaring, you can download the WordPress 2.6 Beta 1 here.  Assuming everything goes according to schedule, the production version should be released sometime in July according to Ryan’s entry.