Create a cookbook - Quick Start Guide

Family Recipe Central provides a set of powerful online tools for you to manage your family recipes and create your family cookbook. With a flexible and full-featured recipe and cookbook publishing system like this, there's a lot going on. New members sometimes aren't sure exactly where to begin. If that sounds like you, don't worry, you're not alone.

To help you get started, follow this simple blueprint to kickoff your family cookbook project.

1. Some preparation first
   Gather your recipes and begin to sort out your source material. If you'll be collecting recipes and related cookbook content (photos, images, stories, etc.) from other family members, you'll want to contact them and encourage them to send you material. The group collaboration feature at Family Recipe Central can really help with this coordination (see step 2).
    
2. The solo cookbook editor or group collaboration?
   Are you planning on putting the cookbook together by yourself, or do you want to enlist the help of other family members in an online group collaboration environment?
   
   If you want to create the cookbook by yourself, you can do this easily from your user account area. You'll be responsible for collecting all of the source material (recipes, photos, stories, etc.) from other family members. Most people will pull this together via email and the postal mail service.
   
   If you'd like to collaborate online with your family members at large, you'll want to create a "Family Group". The group function at Family Recipe Central makes it easy for you to collaborate with other family members in a safe and private online environment. Inside the group area that you setup, your family and group members can submit and enter recipes, submit photos, draft stories, collborate in the planning and editing, and more.
   
   See Create a Family Group - Quick Start Guide, and Adding Members to My Group - Quick Start Guide for more information.
    
3. Start with your recipes
   Before you assemble and pull together your family recipes into a cookbook, you'll want to enter your recipes first. You don't have to have all of your recipes entered and ready to go before you start working on your cookbook, but it helps to have a reasonable starter set of recipes in the system.
   
   See Add a Recipe - Quick Start Guide for more details on how to put your recipes in the system.
    
4. Create your cookbook
   Once you have your project preparation underway, and you have your starting set of recipes ready to go and entered in the system, its time to create the cookbook.
   
   See Cookbook Overview and Add a Cookbook for more details and instructions.

If you have any questions, or can't seem to get something to work quite right, just head over to the Support Area and ask for help. Don't worry, we won't bite. We're friendly folks here at Family Recipe Central. We're here to help you get your family cookbook project off the ground.