Still new to the hobby myself, but I'll pass along my experience and what advice I can. This is my experience and I'm sure it will vary from other's advice. Take it with a grain of salt.
1. Give serious consideration to a deep sand bed while this early into the process. It made a world of difference for me. Get the aragonite type sand if possible. Southdown seems to be the magic stuff.
2. Put your water in the tank. Preferrably RO/DI (reverse osmosis/deinoized). If you use tap water, make sure to kill the chlorine with some additive.
3. Salinity to 1.024, Temp to 78 - 80.
4. Run your filter, but not your skimmer (this will be debated). Some carbon in the filter will help with smell and water clarity.
5. Add a couple of dead shrimp ( the cocktail kind from the grocery store).
6. Measure, measure, measure. Setup a spreadsheet and record your measurements daily of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
7. Adding in any amount of uncured live rock will help the cycle along, but is not necessary. HOWEVER: Adding uncured live rock to a cycled will likely cause the tank to do another, shorter cycle.
You should see the ammonia spike quickly then fall, followed by a nitrite spike and finally a nitrate spike and decline. Once this has happened, I'd give it another week of stablility then slowly add your livestock.
My experience was one of frustration. I got tons of advice from various sources and most of it was different. There are many ways to do this. Some are better than others. I started with a crushed coral substrate and went too fast. I ended up killing 4 damsels and 3 tangs and still never got my trites to drop. After starting over with a deep sand bed, I cycled with a piece of shrimp and 3 (yes three) lbs of uncured live rock in just over 1 week. After the cycle, I bought some fully cured live rock from someone exiting the hobby and things have been going well since.
Take your time. Find a local fish club and talk to locals. Don't get frustrated. I hope you enjoy the hobby!