It is not a new post here ,however i only want to tell you what i know,and it is fit for newbie and not for experienced people.As a new site,the first thing the webmster should do is to write some unique content ,search engine like it very much,and do not forget to write page meta tag,like meta name and meta content.The second thing is to link back from some high PR site,one or two sites is enough,of course,the more the better,if you are will to do so.With a high PR your sites will be found easier,i have done so for a site of mine,you can go here for example, www.english-teachers.net ,it just need about two month to go to PR5,and i only published my first link on www.sitesforteachers.com .The third thing is to show your subdomains as much as possible,you can wirte some articles and put your subdomains in it .
You can get high PR very easy nowadays,and high pr is a important facor to be indexed by search engine ,and it is a basic to get insane amount of traffic.
If there are some sites link to your sites ,google will index your sites quick,so it is not necessary to submmit your sites to google ,but it is necessary to submitt to alexa.com,it may need at least two weeks to be indexed in alexa
Getting indexed is no problem, just make sure your site is linked to an already indexed site like DP.
wwwbug, I agree with the indexing frequency when Google comes into picture (Inbound links from a high PR site will get a new site indexed more quickly). How about other search engines? I know that MSN is quick in finding new pages but how can we increase the speed? I heard that yahoo like RSS feeds thou