While setting up PostgreSQL from scratch, with the aim to use it in NetBeans IDE, I found the following resources helpful:

http://railskey.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/postgresql-installation-in-ubuntu-12-04/

http://ohdevon.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/postgresql-to-netbeans-1/

http://ohdevon.wordpress.com/2011/09/19/postgresql-to-netbeans-2/

For quite a while I had problems relating to  "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432", which had something to do with "postmaster.pid", which I somehow solved via a link I can't find anymore, and which may not have been a problem to begin with.

A key moment was this one, which was useful for setting the password of a new user I'd created:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7695962/postgresql-password-authentication-failed-for-user-postgres

This was useful for setting up a table in my database, which I did by pasting in the below into NetBeans after I made the connection there:

http://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/example-schema/postgresql/where-clause

Now I have a database set up with all permissions everywhere (which turned out to be the hard part) correct:

The next step will be to create a NetBeans Platform application based on this database. I'm assuming it shouldn't be any different to what's described in the NetBeans Platform CRUD Tutorial.