I've used this online 'cheese course' as a massive help to get started:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htmI make an awful lot of the Neufchatel recipe every week and we've just built our own cheese press (for about £10 in parts) and have started on the 'Basic cheese for 1 gallon' recipe but it'll be a few more weeks before the first batch is ready to test.
I first tried with home-made buttermilk as a starter and it never worked, as soon as I used proper starter (bought online) it never fails to get a clean break, whether with veggy or real rennet.
The usual routine for me is to heat, add starter, wait and add rennet one evening; then strain (and cook if doing hard cheese) the curds next morning. For soft cheese I then salt and shape it up that evening and for hard cheese, I press it over night. The soft cheese is best left a couple of days to develop a stronger flavour then eaten within a week. I also sometimes make ricotta from the whey - leave the whey for about twelve hours after the curds have been removed so that it acidifies a bit more and then boil. Ricotta as a light fluffy mass takes ages to strain though so I can't always be bothered. Either way, the pigs love the left over whey.
Only gotcha I've found so far, is not to have a beer in the evening when you're making the curds because yeast gets in and makes it go all bubbly!