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 Contributing Guide
 ******************
 
+
+.. attention::
+
+    A `GitHub <https://github.com>`_ account is required to begin contributing to AstroConda
+
+Adding a recipe to astroconda-contrib
+=====================================
+
+In this example we will be adding a new recipe to the AstroConda repository for `sympy <http://sympy.org>`_, the symbolic
+mathematics library.
+
+Navigate to the `astroconda-contrib <https://github.com/astroconda/astroconda-contrib>`_ repository on GitHub, login,
+and create a fork (or click `here <https://github.com/astroconda/astroconda-contrib/fork>`_ to have your fork created automatically).
+
+Now that you have a fork of astroconda-contrib, go ahead and clone it to your system:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+    git clone https://github.com/[Your_Account]/astroconda-contrib
+    cd astroconda-contrib
+
+
+To get started adding our recipe, create a new branch and name it ``sympy-contrib``:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+    git checkout -t -b sympy-contrib
+
+Git will automatically switch your branch from ``master`` to ``sympy-contrib`` as denoted by the following output:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+    Branch sympy-contrib set up to track local branch master.
+    Switched to a new branch 'sympy-contrib'
+
+If you have taken the liberty of looking around the astroconda-contrib directory, you will have noticed a bunch of
+directories are sitting in there all named by-package. So let's keep things simple and straight forward. Go ahead and
+create a directory and name it ``sympy``, and proceed inside:
+
+.. code-block:: sh
+
+    mkdir sympy
+    cd sympy
+
+.. note::
+
+    This is not an Anaconda packaging tutorial. For more information about creating recipes from scratch, please refer to
+    the `conda-build documentation <http://conda.pydata.org/docs/build_tutorials/pkgs2.html>`_.
+
+    **Hint:** Investigate the contents of the recipes in astroconda-contrib. For most cases, copying an existing recipe and
+    changing its values will suffice.
+
+
+