Okay, this looks neat and I'm finally interested enough to peek in myself. Any hints, tips, or advice for getting in and starting off? Honestly what's drawing me to it more than anything is, if the thread is any indication, the active Bay12 community, so I honestly haven't done much research into this yet.
When you first start out, the game will drop your lord randomly on the map. You don't need to start there. Go into map mode and zoom out. Ideally you want to be zoomed out enough that you can still see the crests of other domains while browsing for a good place to start up your domain.
As for what makes a good place to settle - having a good-sized forest certainly helps, as does having a mountain and/or rocky outcroppings - these will all give you building materials so you don't need to buy them off the market (and, if you're strapped for cash, give you something to sell.) If you can also find some kind of metal, that's a bonus, as refining the ore will provide a good source of cash - almost certainly selling to the NPC buyers, unless it's crazy-high quality. If you can get on or near the coast (note - you probably can't, it's crowded) that's great for future-proofing, as it allows you to build a lighthouse and trade ships.
Up north tends to be emptier, while south is more crowded. It's winter (and will be for real-life months), so don't plan on growing anything if you start up north.
When you first start up your domain, you'll be able to fast forward the building of a bunch of housing - I would suggest going 4 huts -> N/S or E/W road out from all sides of your town square, and keep going till it stops allowing you to fast build.
Depending on how far north you are, consider building a vegetable garden - as long as it's above -1 or so, you can grow leeks and some cabbages, which don't sell for much, but require only time and water (which is cheap.)
If you've got trees (which you should, if you followed my advice), send a settler or two with high ST and CO into the woods, hand them 10 axes, and tell them to get chopping - woodcutters are able to harvest much higher quality lumber then settlers. Also! Use the harvest command, not the chop down command. One depletes the forest for 7 days, the other removes it entirely.
Definitely make getting a school your #1 priority. After that, you'll want to train carpenters, roofers, and bricklayers at a roughly 1:1:1 ratio.