wip

Author: brendt

composer.lock

@@ -1,16 +1,26 @@
 ---
 title: The last alpha release
-description: Tempest alpha 6 is released, some highlights include new tempest/view features; mapper and database improvements; vite support; refactored primitive helpers; and more!
+description: Tempest alpha 6 is released, we'll talk about Tempest's future and highlight the most important new features in this release 
 author: brent
 tag: Release
 ---
 
-Tempest alpha 6 is here: the last alpha release for Tempest. The next one will be beta 1, and from there on out it'll be a straight line to a stable 1.0 release! This final alpha release brings a bunch of new features, improvements, and fixes; this time by 8 contributors in total. I'll walk you through the highlights, and share more about our near-future plans at the end.
+Tempest alpha 6 is here: the last alpha release for Tempest. The next one will be beta 1, and from there on out it'll be a straight line to a stable 1.0 release! This final alpha release brings a bunch of new features, improvements, and fixes; this time by 8 contributors in total. I'll walk you through the highlights, but I want to start by talking about the future plans.
 
 ```
 composer create-project tempest/app:1.0-alpha.6 <name>
 ```
 
+## Tempest's future
+
+Tempest's first alpha release was tagged half a year ago. It's amazing to see that, since then, 35 people have contributed to the project, and alpha.6 is so different and so much more feature-rich than alpha.1. At the same time, it's important to realize that we cannot stay in alpha for years. There is so much more to be done, and Tempest is far from "ready", but there's a real danger of ending in an infinite "alpha limbo", where we keep adding awesome stuff, but never get to actually release something for real.
+
+I want Tempest to be real. And real things aren't perfect. They don't _have_ to be perfect. That's why we're now moving towards 1.0. There'll be one or two beta releases after this one, but that's it. The goal of these beta releases will be to fix some final bugs, review the docs, do some touch-ups here and there. The goal of 1.0 isn't to be perfect, it's to be real.
+
+There is one thing we've agreed on with the core team: we'll mark some components and features as _experimental_. These experimental features can still change after 1.0 in minor releases. This gives us a bit more freedom to iron out the kinks, but also gives Tempest users some more certainty about what's changing and what not. The goal is to have this list ready before beta.1, and then we'll have some more insights in whether there are possibly future breaking changes or not.
+
+All of that being said, let's talk about what's new in Tempest alpha.6!
+
 ## tempest/view updates
 
 We start with tempest/view, which has gotten a lot of love this release. We've fixed a wide range of edge cases and bugs (many were caused because we switched to PHP's built-in HTML 5 spec compliant parser), but we also added a whole range of cool new features.
@@ -313,8 +323,10 @@ class Book implements DatabaseModel
 }
 ```
 
-## In closing
+## New website
 
-One last thing to mention — you might have noticed it already — we've completely redesigned the Tempest website! A big shout-out to Enzo who made a huge effort to get it ready! Of course, there a lot more changes with this release, you can check the [full changelog here](https://github.com/tempestphp/tempest-framework/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha.5).
+One last thing to mention — you might have noticed it already — we've completely redesigned the Tempest website! A big shout-out to Enzo who made a huge effort to get it ready! Of course, there a lot more changes with this release, you can check the [full changelog here](https://github.com/tempestphp/tempest-framework/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha.6).
+
+## In closing
 
-So, what's next? There are a handful of changes to make [before beta 1](https://github.com/tempestphp/tempest-framework/milestone/12). Once beta has been tagged, we'll go in bug hunting mode. Our hope is that enough people will give Tempest a try so that we can have a stable version ready soon. Exciting times ahead!
+That's it for this release, I hope you're excited to give Tempest a try, because your input is so valuable. Don't hesitate to [open issues](https://github.com/tempestphp/tempest-framework/issues) and join our [Discord server](https://tempestphp.com/discord), we'd love to hear from you!