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[Ross Vernal]

You can get by with copper if you can't get bronze, everything else is too pricy/slow/crap.

I dunno, I'm a fan of TIDYSOAPS. If you know there's wood where you're going, you can ditch the coal and it's even cheaper.

Of course, I embark where savagery is high, so having my Proficient Teacher soldier squad upgrade from wagon-built wooden training axes to -steel battle axes- within the first season is practically routine for me.

[Forumite]

The Textile Industry is easily abusable, and you can sell socks (masterwork cloth, masterfully dyed, and masterfully sown together) to buy steel armor and weapons.

[Roraborialisforealis]

After a dozen forts, I still haven't managed to get a good metal industry going... my latest fort is the closest though, but even it's mostly trading off gems and crafts and using the metal to arm my first militia.

Theres nothing more luxurious then melting down your soldiers gear till it all has the master-craft crest next to it from reforging.

[Valdrax]

Yes i know, and there is so much stone i cant do ANYTHING! 

AFAIK, stone doesn't get in the way of anything but (1) Farms and (2) Stockpiles.  (Not sure about engraving, though.)
Otherwise, dwarves just walk over stones and move them as necessary to built structures on their squares.

Also i know you need to muddy the stone ect, but i was told you cant do farms above ground, but if you can, how?

For above-ground farms, you need above-ground seeds.  Seeds traded from human & elven caravans are above-ground seeds.  You can also have an herbalist (i.e a dwarf with plant gathering turned on) root about for plants above ground and then use the seeds from them after they've been eaten/brewed/etc. 

Below ground, I'd recommend putting your farms on soil layers instead of stone floors, if you have them.  You don't have to muddy soil.  Soil layers are also nice for training up your miners and for putting stockpiles without having to worry about clearing stone out of the way.

Read the following wiki articles for more info:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Farming
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Crop

[Girlinhat]

Cloth crafts are VERY easy to abuse.  A skilled farmer, dyer, weaver, and clothier producing crafts can pump out hundreds of thousands of dorfbucks.  Just get some spare haulers for milling and threshing, and two farms dedicated to year round rope reed + blade weed, and you can set them on easy repeat, letting the clutter level self-regulate the production of goods.  I think you can hit ~650☼ per craft, and crafts aren't claimed by clingy dwarves, AND crafts are produced in 3's.

[Zorae]

I haven't really gotten a metal industry up and running either. At least not to the extent that I get my textile/food/glass industry. I'll make enough armor/weapons for my squad, I may get bored and make statues of all the different kinds of metal available and some gold furniture, and at some point I wind up doing a massive production of serrated discs (omg, my hall of 20 traps takes 10 each D:). But it usually just winds up being 3-4 dwarves endlessly smelting ore.

Setting up the plant processing, milling, weaving, dying, then sowing chain is fun (and very profitable) and ties up more dwarves to keep it up. Maybe it's just because metal is non-renewable and I'd rather horde it than use it up

As far as stone, I only dump the stone off of my stockpiles (hate not knowing how much is there without checking the stocks). But if it really bothers you I think DFHack has an autodump command.

[sambojin]

TIDYSOAPS does give you some good weapons on startup, but boy is it expensive. And very, very slow. Try it in a terrifying terrain and you'll see how much better bronze is on embark. A few simple reactions and your weapons are done. You don't need the manager set up, or have a complicated build queue. Just start with 1 charcoal, and refine a couple of bit coal at the start and you're good to go. Smelting from ores and the fact you get two bars from the reaction is great. Just make sure you reserve one "bar" of charcoal in case of fuel-supply brain farts.

You can belt out 6-8 weapons in the first 10 days of your fort. Even if you get mobbed very early on, the extra 2-3 bronze axes/picks you now have has saved many of my forts from immediate ruin. Bronze is functionally the same as steel for most purposes (killing undead, hunting, snatchers, ambushes) in the early game. Steel is better, but at 312 embark points compared to about 18 points for a weapon pair, it had better be. I'd really prefer 8 bronze weapons than 2 steel, plus those 8 are still cheaper and probably faster to make.

To the OP, if you're finding things slow at the start, try turning on masonry and architecture for all your dwarves. It ensures that all you buildings get built ASAP by whoever has a spare moment. Just set your mason's workshop to only use skilled dwarves or higher. And never set up a stone stockpile at the start. Your wagon carries the good/useful stones/ores at the start. All the stuff you dig for can just sit there until a dwarf needs it. Stone, ore and bar stockpiles are for a bit later when efficiency is important, you just want to get things done at the start.

[malvado]

I've personally had no luck with above ground farms in Vanilla 31.25 , however editing the raws and changing the entity_default with the following entry fixed it all for me (for dwarfs) :
[OUTDOOR_FARMING]

Basically it gives you the possibilty to Farm without problems the aboveground plants which usually will show up if you try to have a farm plot above ground (aka in the sunlight).
It does fix the confusion a lot of people are seeing when they make an exposed to sunlight farm plot but being unable to actually grow anything thats listed there (strawberries etc).

[Putnam]

and then it takes ages to dump all the stone,

I think you gave yourself a clue...  ask yourself what is the advantage of dumping stone.

To clear space so your fortress looks cleaner.

d>b>h

[Qwernt]

For me the easiest way to get metal going is to embark by a volcanoe. You don't even have to dig if you don't want to, just build right at the surface.

Lots of good advice here. 
Definitely focus dwarves on duties (diggers dig) when that duty is the priority (after diggers make legendary, I often take them off digging and let someone else skill up - legendary haulers move faster, pick wielding Soldiers are awsomer).

Also focus on core before you do anything else.  The basics are needed:
    Safety (wall all the way around, or even just a trench - fancy actually doesn't require destroying a wall to allow migrants in - you don't have to be fancy)
    Food (kill the beasts of burden - you should be good depending on migrant sizes, after that Plump Helmets!)
    Alchohol (plump helmets!  Or if you can build a big enough safe haven, pick plants and setup that above ground farm berries == easy)
Everything else is second.

One other thought, set a max population.  If you are having a hard time getting DF going, try with only 30-40 dwarves.  Less headache is less headache.

[Aiur]

Any time I want to build anything where there's a rock, my dorfs WILL cancel it.

Beds, doors, statues, cages, traps. Doesn't matter. If there's a rock, the job WILL be canceled.

This usually only occurs when the rock in question has already been designated for something else, such as dumping. If the rock isn't marked as to be dumped, and there isn't a craftsdwarf or mason who suddenly needs THAT rock, whoever builds the furniture will just pick it up and move it out of the way. I've noticed this behavior work well even with 10+ rocks in the build site.