New Eggheads

Welcome aboard and enjoy here journey.
Now regarding your questions, here's a description of the various types of BGE cooks:  (and the platesetter or conveggtor of today or something like it is needed).
After-market toys- With the BGE there are three basic styles of cooking;  “direct”-where the cooking grid is on top of the fire ring; “raised direct”-where the grid is elevated at least to the gasket-line (this setup requires after-market stuff-easiest is to get another grid and then use three fire bricks (or three empty aluminum beer cans) and place them on the grid at the fire ring and then put the second grid on top. The third is “indirect” where there is a heat deflector (platesetter or some other type stone) between the burning lump and the cooking grid.  This is the setup for low&slow long duration cooks.  I would get comfortable playing around with the BGE before any major after-market investments.  Will save you $$ in the long run.

Regulating temp is all about air-flow.  You will get there. Regarding the steak, there are about as many ways to cook as there are posters here.  But to keep it simple, I would go direct (see above) and flip every coule of minutes til done.
Done-equals by temperature.  
For hot&fast (steak like) cooks you need a quick instant read thermo (thermopen is the instrument of choice here) or one that can stay in the cooking environment the whole time.  
That's enough for now.

Here's the web site:  http://www.thermoworks.com/products/thermapen/  Mine is several years old-works fine but doesn't have all the bells and whistles.  The thermopop gets great reviews (new since I bought my thermo).  
A thermapen product is a cooking enhancer, but you likely won't find one today.  You can buy a cheap analog thermo in most grocery stores that can sit in an oven environment that will get you close.  Doesn't have the quick response but if riding along after the last flip of the steak is better than guessing.  BTW-most of those can be calibrated using the nut on the back.  FWIW-

It's been several years, but it does seem to me that there was a bit of a learning curve on temp regulation. You didn't say what kind of chicken (whole, halved, spatchcock, separate pieces) it was, but when grilling chicken pieces direct it can be helpful to flip fairly often, and maybe rotate them around different parts of the grid, because often some parts are a little hotter than others.

And for many things, grilling to temp (i.e., not time) is super helpful.  You've already seen that people here love the Thermapen, which is a pretty expensive but super fast thermometer, but you can certainly do the job with a slower, cheaper one -- it'll just take a few seconds to be sure it's reading the true temperature.  But the point is that you check the temperature of the chicken to see how done it is.  160 is where I like to cook breasts, and 165 or even higher for dark meat. If you check the temperature, you'll have good chicken every time.

Same thing on the steak.  People cook them several different ways.  Some people cook steaks on high heat 500, 600, even higher, flip once, cook to temp.  Some people cook them slowly to a lower internal temperature and then take them out, fire up the Egg to a much higher fire and then sear them ("reverse sear"), some people do the opposite, sear them first at a very high fire, then take them out, let the Egg cool down to 300 or even lower, and cook them slowly to the internal temp they want (people used to call this "T-rex method").  I don't cook a lot of steaks, most frequently do it the first way, but if I have a really thick steak, I like T-rex.  The simplest way is the first way, so it might be good to try that first.  Get the fire up to 600 or so dome temperature, put the steaks on, flip them every couple of minutes until the internal temp is 120 or so (for medium rare).

And as others said, the ConvEggtor (used to be called plate setter) is for indirect cooks, which is a completely different way of cooking than direct grilling.  Most low and slow cooks, when you're smoking something, doing real barbecue as opposed to grilling, will need some way of separating the food from the direct action of the fire, and the conveggtor is BGE's way of doing that.  There are other ways, like the "Adjustable Rig," and others.  Get used to cooking direct for a while.  No need to rush into accessories right away.  Then you can decide with more experience and knowledge what accessories you really want, and which ones you really don't need.

Yes, and yes.    I always open the bottom vent all the way, and take the top thing off completely when I'm lighting a fire.  And yes, if you don't keep an eye on it, it can get very hot very quickly, and the Eggs take a long time to cool down.

So I light them that way, but check back in 10 or 15 minutes to see where the temperature is, and as soon as it's close to where I want it, I close down the top and bottom vents to where I'm guessing they'll need to be for the cook, and check again in 10 minutes or so, nudging as needed.

Different Eggs of different sizes seem to heat up at different rates, so your mileage may vary, as they say.  It will also vary depending on whether you light in one place or several.  I usually just light one place if it's for a low-and slow cook with the plate setter/ConvEggtor, but 3 or 4 places if I want most of the lump burning for a hot direct cook.  The more places burning, the more air rushing through, the hotter it'll get, and more quickly.

I really think I can promise that if you just keep watching what happens, maybe taking notes so you can review next time what worked and didn't work the last time, pretty darn quickly you'll feel like you know how it works and what to expect, where to put the vents for what fire, etc..  When it's new to you, just be extra careful, keep checking it more frequently till you get familiar with how things work on your egg with your lump charcoal.

stevens said:

Thanks Theophan and others for the tips!!  Cooking Ribeye steaks tonight.  Wish me luck!!

Stevens, grill your steaks tonight and show us tomorrow 

Ross