$DISPLAY not set

I have installed freeBSD & have it running. I was trying to install MATE
& KDE4, but I'm getting an error.
everytime I try to run exec startkde it logs me out with this message:

$DISPLAY is not set or cannot connect to xserver


echo $DISPLAY says
DISPLAY: undefined variable

I was using this guide to set everything up:
https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/#with-radeon-intel-or-otherwise

am I missing something?

I do have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf, I did do the X -configure.


-- 
Paul Cartwright
Registered Linux User #367800 and new counter #561587