Android Question Best guide for signing and publishing app?

It's been about seven years since I created a brand new app for the Play Store, and things seem more complicated now when it comes to the signing.

I'm about to launch a new app, and for that I searched the forum, the documentation, and the video guides to better understand the steps required to sign and publish. I still feel very unsure on what to do. I'm also worried that I might accidently choose an option that I can't change at a later point, just because I can't understand the consequences right now. *

I've found these two guides:
Updated in 2010, and also a pinned thread. As far as I can tell it's still entirely correct. But doesn't contain any information on how the process is with Google Play Console.

Updated in 2021. This one contains steps involving Google Play Console, but it's not updated so I can't really match the Console website to the guide. (Plus it seems very technical, with many manual steps. In the end there's a suggestion for making a batch file, perhaps a forum member has made a userfriendly one that works well and can be shared?)

So my question is this, is there a guide somewhere that is more updated and easier to follow? There are lots of members here creating new apps all of the time, how do you know what steps to use?


* Actually publishing an app feels a whole lot more complicated than actually designing and coding it.