Building up colonies
Once I can build a Recruiting Center, I buy one when starting a new colony. Once the population maxes out, you can upgrade it to something more useful.
If you can, loan or import extra citizens to get the population growing. If you can leave 2000 troops on a newly conquered planet for a few turns it will add significantly to the population remaining when the troops pull out.
You will probably want to "focus" on social production for a good while with a new colony.
Bootstrap manufacturing next. Build two of the cheapest manufacturing buildings available first. You will probably have to go to the "old" tab to find what you need. When they are done upgrade them to something better. If you try to go straight to your best manufacturing facility first, it may take an unreasonable amount of time for that one building. You may need to go to the "details" screen and turn off automatic upgrades under Governors.
A Starport isn't very useful early on, even the simplest ships will take forever.
If you have to cancel a computer initiated upgrade, use the "X" not the delete key or you will lose the building being upgraded.
Be careful of building farms on farm resources. You may be forced to build several morale improvements to deal with the extra population. Your tax rate will be driven by the most unhappy colonies, not all the happy ones.
If later on, you decide to build a Galactic Achievement or Trade Goods, Go to the planets list and select foreign. This will only show you planets you can see on your map but it will sometimes save the heartbreak and waste of being beaten to the punch on one of these unique improvements. If you find another planet building the same thing after you have started, you may be able to send spys to slow them down or just buy your improvement just before they finish theirs.