Version 1.6 of BlogEngine.net, which runs this blog amongst many others, was released this morning. The two main new features are a centralised comment management system and multiple widget zones. Here’s the rest from the release notes.

• Centralized Comment Management
• Automated Comment Spam Filtering with ability to plug-in custom Filtering modules
• Multiple Widget Zones (details)
• Referrers data and Blogroll items now stored in Database when using the DB blog provider.
• Unsubscribe Link in Comment Notification Emails
• Referrer Data can be Stored for more than 7 days.
• Blogroll items can now be Ordered.
• Newsletter Widget more Intelligent - Emails sent when a post is going from an Unpublished to Published state.
• Twitter Widget - New options and improvements
• Page Slugs now saved in Database.
• New Logging system to Track events and errors.
• Unhandled Exception Handling
• Fixes to Comment Notification Emails not being sent out correctly in some cases.
• Outgoing Email improvements
• Many other improvements and fixes

Simple upgrade instructions are available here in the documentation. Congratulations to the whole team!