In most of the Cisco router IOS I find the ports like ge0/0 ge0/1 and ge0/2 or whatever your ports are down. They will not even give you a link light. So one of the first tasks should be getting the port you are working with up.
In my case the first goal is often connectivity with the LAN and WAN.
LAN = your local area network (eg. in the office/home )
WAN= your ISP/public internet (eg. fiber/cable/dsl/ethernet).........