adding a blog entry for PHP RC (#3259)

content/en/blog/2023/php-rc-release.md

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+---
+title: Opentelemetry PHP Release Candidate
+linkTitle: PHP Release Candidate
+date: 2023-09-13
+author:
+  '[Brett McBride](https://github.com/brettmc/) (Deakin University), [Przemek
+  Delewski](https://github.com/pdelewski/) (SumoLogic), and [Bob
+  Strecansky](https://github.com/bobstrecansky/) (Mailchimp)'
+cSpell:ignore: codebases Delewski Mailchimp McBride PECL Przemek Strecansky
+---
+
+The OpenTelemetry PHP team is pleased to announce that the
+[opentelemetry-php](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-php/)
+library has progressed to Release Candidate stability. This release is the
+culmination of years of work from the OpenTelemetry PHP team. Thank you to all
+of the contributors, testers, and integrators that made this release happen. We
+most certainly couldn’t have made this release without the help of the community
+at large.
+
+This is the first release candidate we are publishing to garner further input
+from the community. This release offers support for tracing, metrics, and logs
+for PHP applications, as well as auto-instrumentation via a
+[PECL extension](https://pecl.php.net/package/opentelemetry). We will continue
+to refine the library as we receive bug reports, as well as moving towards a
+general availability release.
+
+## What happens next?
+
+We would love to see people testing the code against production-like workloads.
+Once we have confidence at scale with positive feedback from the community, we
+will move to general availability with a 1.0.0 release.
+
+We are also looking to promote our
+[contrib packages](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-php-contrib/)
+to RC and then GA, based on feedback from the community.
+
+## How can you help?
+
+If you are new to OpenTelemetry PHP, the best place to start is with the
+[getting started documentation](/docs/instrumentation/php/getting-started/).
+
+We are looking for developers to test this instrumentation in their PHP
+codebases. We are happy to triage any issues that might come up — please feel
+free to open an issue in our repository’s
+[GitHub issues](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-php/issues/).
+Pull requests are also always welcome in any of our repositories:
+
+- [API/SDK](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-php/)
+- [Contrib](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-php-contrib/)
+- [Instrumentation](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-php-instrumentation/)

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