What are the beginning steps...?

I’m not asking for specific step-by-step help with this question, but I would like to know how veteran CMS users go about the development of a site with a CMS.

Assuming that...
1. your graphics have been uploaded to /assets/templates/default/images/
2. your css file has been uploaded to /assets/templates/default/
3. your template has been created (and I’m not sure where it gets stored)

Where do you go from here?

The template gets "installed" by copy/pasting it into a new template field in Resources, in the Manager. So physically, it’s in the database (although you can just use a simple snippet that "includes" a file, if you prefer to have your template files in the filesystem).

Then you remove content text and replace it with MODx tags as appropriate. For example, a menu gets replaced with a [[Wayfinder]] snippet call, and the main body of your content gets replaced with the [*content*] tag. Sidebar and footer text can be replaced by {{sidebar}} and {{footer}} chunks. I always try to have my template be just the basic HTML layout, with MODx tags. Makes it much easier to see the template itself for editing and adjusting the CSS without all the content text in the way.

Create/edit documents, assign their template to be your template from the drop-down on the document editing page, add the content you want (it can contain more MODx tags or HTML code), and that’s it.

Whatever you put in for the Document content gets inserted where you put the [*content*] tag in your template. Likewise for all other MODx tags.

You can log in to my site’s Manager (see my sig below) and look at everything to see how it’s done.