I am currently using using xfce4 on gentoo linux and i hope to get some programs started every time i start xfce4. How can i do this? I think there should be some startup script somewhere for me to write whatever commands i want to get started but don't know which. Can someone help me out? Appreciate it.

There should be a .xinitrc file in your home directory. If not, you can create one. In it, you can put the path to the xfce executable(s) - I think there's more than one for the main xfce wm and taskbar etc., as well as any other stuff you might want to fire up automatically. I don't use xfce myself, but I've used blackbox in the past with a similar thing in mind. My .xinitrc went something along these lines:

#begin
exec bbkeys -i &
exec blackbox &
exec xfe
#EOF

Where bbkeys is a keymapper that I had some custom things set for (the -i switch was to iconify aka minimize it at start), blackbox is the window manager, and xfe is the file manager I used, which I wanted to start up automatically.

You can create symbolic links or a shell script in ~/Desktop/Autostart. Anything in this directory will be run each time you start xfce.

--Ian