diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 6bd9a60..44a9708 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -6,9 +6,12 @@ The Flask Status Extension is a simple Flask extension that adds a status ping r
 
 ## Features
 
-- **Status Endpoint**: Adds a `/api/status` endpoint to your Flask application.
-- **Custom Status Message**(coming soon): Set a custom status message to provide more specific information about the health of your application.
-- **Logging**(coming soon): Logs incoming requests to the status endpoint and changes to the custom status message for monitoring purposes.
+- **Status Endpoint**: Adds a status ping endpoint (`/api/status` by default) to your Flask application.
+- **Custom Status Message**: Set a custom status message to provide more specific information about the health of your application.
+- **Add more fields/data to status ping payload**: you can add more fields to the payload. This is helpful in cases where you want to add more info to the returned payload, for example, the state of the database.
+- **Authenticated Ping route**: With `FlaskStatus`, you can now set the status ping route to be only accessed by authenticated users or requests.
+
+See [below](#usage) for more info.
 
 ## Installation
 
@@ -33,10 +36,10 @@ from flask import Flask
 from flask_status import FlaskStatus
 
 app = Flask(__name__)
-FlaskStatus(app, url="/api/status", message={"message": "show my status"})
+FlaskStatus(app)
 
-if __name__ == '__main__':
-    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=5000)
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=5000)
 ```
 
 - run the `main.py` file
@@ -55,7 +58,17 @@ python3 main.py
 }
 ```
 
-If custom message is passed, then:
+You can also set the route for the status ping, and also the payload returned:
+
+```python
+app = Flask(__name__)
+FlaskStatus(app, url="/api/ping", message={"message": "show my status"})
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=5000)
+```
+
+payload from [`http://localhost:5000/api/ping`](http://localhost:5000/api/ping):
 
 ```json
 {
@@ -63,6 +76,79 @@ If custom message is passed, then:
 }
 ```
 
+If the message is just a string and not a dictionary, example:
+
+```python
+FlaskStatus(app, message="Running")
+```
+
+It'd be converted to a JSON object payload by putting it in a `message` field as follows follows:
+
+```json
+{
+  "message": "Running"
+}
+```
+
+### Add more data
+
+As said above, you can add more data to the status ping payload by using the `.add_field(key, value)` method. Example:
+
+```python
+flask_status = FlaskStatus(app)
+
+flask_status.add_field("error", False)
+
+# you can also add functions to run on request of the status route
+def check_database():
+    # check if database is running
+    return True
+
+flask_status.add_field("database", check_database)
+```
+
+The result payload of the above code is as follows:
+
+```json
+{
+    "status": "OK",
+    "error": false,
+    "database": true
+}
+```
+
+### Authenticate status route
+
+You can now also set the status ping route to be for only authenticated users of the API by passing an `authenticator` function which should be a decorator function to the flask route function. Example:
+
+```python
+from functools import wraps
+
+# define an authenticator decorator function
+def login_required(self, func):
+    @wraps(func)
+    def wrapper(*args, **kwargs):
+        token = request.cookies.get(AUTH_TOKEN_HEADER)
+        if not token:
+            return abort(401)
+        if not verify_token(token):
+            return abort(403)
+        return func(*args, **kwargs)
+  return wrapper
+
+# define FlaskStatus with this authenticator function
+FlaskStatus(app, authenticator=login_required)
+```
+
+The logic in the `authenticator` function would be run before returning the status payload in this manner:
+
+```python
+@app.route("/api/status")
+@authenticator
+def status_ping():
+    return jsonify({"status": "OK"})
+```
+
 ## Issues
 
 If you encounter any issues with this extension or have suggestions for improvements, please create an issue on the [GitHub Issues page](https://github.com/Emmo00/flask-status/issues).