2nd offline tournament

I've been reading through everything, and it's all making my head spin... So, here's a request: could you write out, in simple terms for someone as clueless as me, what needs to be done to participate in any tournament? Just a straightforward list, step by step...
1. Do this...
2. Then do that...
and so on.
Because everyone is writing different things, saying to install this here, not to install that there, and to do this in this way...