There’s a few ways you can go about making compost. I highly recommending reading this book first.
A thermo compost system works great but only if you have all the material ready to go. The main reason you want it to “cook” it is to kill off any pathogens and bad bacteria.
Another common style is an “add as you go” pile. This is when you keep adding stuff, normally things like fruit and veg scraps. Coffee grinds are great too. This style of composting is most common for the average household without a lot space. This pile won’t heat up like the thermo pile but as long as you don’t add any risky stuff that shouldn’t be an issue. I never add manure that hasn’t already aged and started to compost for risk of E. coli. No meat or dairy and no cooked foods. You’ll need to keep your carbon based(brown stuff) material on hand so every time you add your kitchen scraps(nitrogen rich green stuff) you cover them with some brown material. You stop adding once the pile is around 4ft tall or the bin is 3/4 full, allowing room to turn the pile.
As it was mentioned above turning(aeration) and correct moisture(water) levels are key to any quality compost. Proper practice of this will entail your pile or bin will stay aerobic not anaerobic(normally caused by over watering). I also like to add rock dust, lime, wood ash, weed scraps etc to the pile during it’s process.
Like @ifish mentioned above LABs are a great way to speed up the process while adding beneficial bacteria. This will also control any smells coming off the food scraps but as long as your brown material is always the final layer smells are non existent in my experience. Another good reason not to use cooked food.
If you want to compost “everything”(including meat and dairy) a bokashi bucket is the way to go. I have an easy to make bokashi recipe, if you need it I’ll add it bellow.
@Faithisyours not trying to call you out mate but these numbers are incorrect. A compost pile is majority carbon based material 70/80%(brown stuff) and 20/30% nitrogen based material(green stuff)
When my compost is finished it goes in to my worm bin for another 6 months then I harvest it.