diff --git a/.Rbuildignore b/.Rbuildignore
index d9db3f9..7c33303 100644
--- a/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/.Rbuildignore
@@ -2,3 +2,5 @@
 ^cran-comments\.md$
 ^.*\.Rproj$
 ^hutan-manual\.pdf$
+^\.travis\.yml$
+figure$
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 09a72cb..db183f4 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@
 .Rhistory
 .RData
 inst/doc
+.DS_Store
diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 67b05af..1ce0007 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
 Package: hutan
 Title: A Collection of Tools for Phylogenetic Tree Manipulation
-Version: 0.0.0.9000
-Date: 2015-06-01
-Authors@R: person("Casey", "Dunn", email = "casey_dunn@brown.edu", role = c("aut", "cre"))
+Version: 0.5.0
+Date: 2017-07-23
+Authors@R: person("Casey", "Dunn", email = "casey.dunn@yale.edu", role = c("aut", "cre"))
 Description: A collection of tools for phylogenetic tree manipulation. It is
     named after the Indonesian word for forest.
 Depends:
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 2cf4445..37b3e28 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+
+# hutan 0.5.0
+
+- Prepared for release.
+
 # hutan 0.1.0
 
-- First pass at hutan, motivated largely by the desire to implment `zero_constrained()` and `is_monophyletic()`. Other functions were created largely in service of these two.
+- First pass at hutan, motivated largely by the desire to implment 
+`zero_constrained()` and `is_monophyletic()`. Other functions were 
+created largely in service of these two.
+
+- Built out a variety of other functions for tree manipulations 
+we regularly do.
\ No newline at end of file