Alright, well I heard of Dwarf Fortress a while ago, though I never actually played it until yesterday. I was simply amazed at the depth of the game. After reading up some guides and poking around the wiki, I finally decided to give it a shot. I abandoned my first and second fortresses because I chose bad locations(first location had way to much soil. I actually had a lack of stone, which confused me because the wiki kept referring to ways to get rid of excess stone. Second fortress didn't have enough soil; I couldn't grow any crops or gather food). My third fortress is going pretty well however, and I just finished my first year. I do have a few problems though:
1) I can't seem to obtain enough bags. This led to a bunch of seeds lying around my fortress, instead of being in bags, in barrels, like they are supposed to. The food stockpile in general is just a mess as well, with things being in random locations, which makes it very time consuming to check food stockpiles. Any advice for getting everything nice and organized?
So I'm not sure exactly what the problem here is - unable to produce bags fast enough, or just not happy with how the dwarves don't put all the same food in the same tile? To get plenty of bags, just buy leather (either on embark or from the first caravan). It's really cheap to buy enough to make all the bags you'll possibly want.
For organization, you can make 3 custom stockpiles, and that should be all you really can do. One for food, one for bevs, and one for seeds. The seed one can be pretty small as they will put a lot of bags, each containing a lot of seeds, into one barrel.
Other than that, you might just have to not worry if it doesn't look too organized. Also keep in mind that in the early game when you don't have hordes of dedicated haulers, it'll take them a long time to get everything to it's proper stockpile bin/barrel.
2) Speaking of food being disorganized, I can't seem to get food/booze production to flow smoothly. Despite having two growers and many plots of farmland, they only ever grew 1 plant - a plump h-thing. I'm really confused with this, especially the differences between tiles(I can't tell what is what). I built a still because I was low on booze. I had a lot of strawberries gathered so I wanted to make strawberry wine to get the seeds to plant, but the guy only make prickleberry wine(leading to the seed flooding I mentioned earlier)
So you have 2 questions here I guess - how to get them to grow other plants and how to make them brew strawberries.
#1) Hit q, move over the farm plot, use the keys to select other seasons, move up and down and hit enter to select other plants. Make sure you have the seeds, otherwise they'll just waste that season.
#2) Hit z, select 'Kitchen' and hit enter. You can select what is allowed to be brewed by mousing over it and hitting b. Blue means they'll brew it, red means they won't, so mouse down over prickle berries, hit b, and they won't brew it anymore.
3) The dwarven traders arrived in fall, which let me sell a ton of crafts and buy some meat and plants(for food), as well as leather and silk(to make bags, to put the seeds in). The trading went okay, I think I got the hang of it. However, I never got any liasion to talk to. Did I do something wrong?
Unless he got killed by something, you got one. Odds are, your Mayor has too many other tasks on and just won't perform the meeting. I'd turn all tasks off your mayor/broker when the caravan arrives to make sure your mayor's available to trade and meet with the liason.
4) I placed the foundation for a clothing workshop to I could make bags from the traded materials, but for some reason my mason won't build it. I checked the masons labor, he has both masonry and architecture enabled, so I don't get why it isn't being built. Am I missing some sort of requirement?
Probably requires the clothesmaking labor to be enabled on some dwarf. Just hit q and mouse over the designated building and see what it says is required. If it only requires labors you have enabled, it's probably just because the dwarves aren't getting to it. Cancel some of their other jobs so they'll prioritize it. It may also have been suspended because the site is inacessible. Dwarves won't build something if they have to stand on top of another designation to build it, so you should try unsuspended it once (hit q, move cursor over building, and if it is suspended hit s to unsuspend), and then if it gets suspended again try cancelling the construction and building it somewhere else.
Also, think about using leatherworking not clothesmaking for bags. That way your leatherworker can practice their useful skill, so they'll make better armor.