diff --git a/doc/source/users_guide/CMakeLists.txt b/doc/source/users_guide/CMakeLists.txt
index 91cadd9b32..b2856655b9 100644
--- a/doc/source/users_guide/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/doc/source/users_guide/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+add_subdirectory(advanced)
 set(SOURCES index.rst
 	        installing.rst
             using.rst
diff --git a/doc/source/users_guide/advanced/CMakeLists.txt b/doc/source/users_guide/advanced/CMakeLists.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..e69de29bb2
diff --git a/doc/source/users_guide/installing.rst b/doc/source/users_guide/installing.rst
index 8f54608a7c..fd27847d84 100644
--- a/doc/source/users_guide/installing.rst
+++ b/doc/source/users_guide/installing.rst
@@ -2,46 +2,99 @@
 Installing the library
 ======================
 
-This chapter describes the installation of *h5cpp* from sources. 
+This chapter describes the installation of *h5cpp* from sources. We discuss 
+here the installation on a Linux (OSX should be quite similar). Installation 
+on Windows is beyond this scope of this chapter and will be described in the 
+advanced topics section of this manual. 
 
 Requirements
 ------------
 
 In order to build the code you need 
 
-* a C++ compiler with reasonable C++11 support (gcc>=4.9,Micrsoft Developer Studio >= 2015)
-* the Boost libraries
-* the HDF5 C library
-* googletest to build the unit tests
-* sphinx (with python) and doxygen for the documentation build
-* cmake >= 3.0
+* a C++ compiler with reasonable C++11 support 
+  (gcc>=4.9,Micrsoft Developer Studio >= 2015)
+* the `Boost`_ libraries
+* the `HDF5`_ C library
+* `googletest`_ to build the unit tests
+* `sphinx`_ (with python) and  `doxygen`_ for the documentation build
+* `cmake`_ >= 3.0
+
+.. _cmake: https://cmake.org/
+.. _sphinx: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/
+.. _HDF5: https://support.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/
+.. _Boost: http://www.boost.org/
+.. _doxygen: http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/index.html
+.. _googletest: https://github.com/google/googletest
 
 Getting the code
 ----------------
 
-You can either obtain one of the release tar balls from the `release site`_ of the 
-project on GitHub or clone the master branch of the repository. 
+You can either obtain one of the release tar balls from the `release site`_ of 
+the project on GitHub or clone the master branch of the repository. 
 In the first case you get a source tree with 
 
 .. code-block:: bash
 
 	$ tar -xzf h5cpp-*.tar.gz
 	
-while in the latter you may want to use 
+while in the latter case you may want to use 
 
 .. code-block:: bash
 
 	$ git clone https://github.com/ess-dmsc/h5cpp.git
 	
-*h5cpp* uses :program:`CMake` to build the code in which case an out of 
-source build is recommended. 
-
-_release site: https://github.com/ess-dmsc/h5cpp/releases
+In either case you end up with a directory :file:`h5cpp` in your current 
+directory. 
 
+.. _release site: https://github.com/ess-dmsc/h5cpp/releases
 
 
-Building and testing 
+Building and testing
 --------------------
 
+*h5cpp* users :program:`cmake` for building, thus, after unpacking or cloning 
+the sources you should create a build directory
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    $ make h5cpp-build
+    $ cd h5cpp-build
+    
+and call cmake from there. In the simplest case just call 
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    $ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../h5cpp 
+    
+which should do the job provided that all dependencies are installed in 
+standard locations. We strongly recommend to set the particular build 
+configuration with the :envvar:`CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE` variable.   
+
+On a Linux system the default build system used is 
+:program:`make`. Thus, in the build directory, just run make 
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    $ make 
+    
+and to build and run the unittests
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    $ make run_tests
+    
 Installation
-------------
\ No newline at end of file
+------------
+    
+A subsequent 
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    $ make install
+    
+should finally install the code. The default installation prefix is 
+:file:`/usr/local`. If you want to change this set the 
+:envvar:`CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX` at the initial call to :program:`cmake` to the 
+desired installation location. 
+