The standard way to alter your PATH is to add a line to your
~/.bash_login,
~/.profile or
~/.login file (depending on which shell you're using). Bash will read either of the first two filenames, but let's use
~/.bash_login for consistency sake.
Open up that file (or create one if you don't have it yet) by using vi, pico, emacs, jove, or whatever else is your favorite editor in Terminal.app. Then append your desired directory to the end of the existing PATH value like so:
export PATH="${PATH}:/Users/joe/bin"
Close that terminal window and open another (File -> New Shell), then type
echo $PATH and you should see your specified path appended to the end. Then just make sure you have that directory (you can use
mkdir ~/bin to create it if needed).
Now you can drop scripts and programs into that file to your heart's content, and they'll automatically be found when you type in their names to the shell.
Note that there's a slight variation on this that can work too, and that might be more commonly used, as demonstrated by this actual entry in my own ~/.bash_login file:
PATH="${PATH}:/sw/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/Users/taylor/bin"; export PATH
Hope that helps clear things up!
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