diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index f70a4a9..47b540f 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,14 +1,57 @@
-work in progress
+pastebucket
+===========
 
-mostly works though but needs more works
+A pastebin like web application. Useful for pasting text into a form to store.
+Syntax highlighting is selected via a dropdown menu and is applied server side.
+No javascript to load, just some CSS.
 
-see it in action https://p.rascul.xyz
+Curl may be used to submit text, but there is no option at this time to specify
+the language (for syntax highlighting) via curl:
+```bash
+cargo check | curl -T- https://p.rascul.xyz
+curl -T- https://p.rascul.xyz < src/main.rs
+```
+
+The git repo is located at https://gitlab.com/rascul/pasteb.
+There is an instance running at https://p.rascul.xyz.
+
+pastebucket is written in [rust](https://rust-lang.org) and uses the
+[gotham](https://gotham.rs) web application framework.
+
+## Building
 
+First, clone the repo:
 ```bash
 git clone https://gitlab.com/rascul/pasteb
+```
+
+Enter the directory and create your configuration:
+```bash
 cd pasteb
 cp config.toml.default config.toml
 $EDITOR config.toml
+```
+
+Build pastebucket
+```bash
 cargo build --release
+```
+
+## Running
+
+Run pastebucket
+```bash
 cargo run --release
 ```
+
+It is best to run a web server such as [Apache](https://httpd.apache.org) or
+[nginx](https://nginx.org) and reverse proxy connections to pastebucket.
+
+You may run the executable directly (without cargo), it is located at
+`target/release/pastebucket`.
+
+pastebucket should be run from the directory containing `config.toml`. At this
+time there is no option specify where to load the config from via the command
+line.
+
+A sample systemd service file is included in the git repo.