Read the background article first for context, as this is just my one personal experience.
There's quite a few guides online for how to buy a weekly or monthly pass (called "Navigo") for the Paris metro, but none of them seemed to really go into the details. There are two versions of the Navigo: The normal Navigo and the Navigo Découverte (Discovery). The difference is the normal Navigo is for Paris area residents only (and thus need proof of residence, ie a lease or utility bill), while anyone and everyone can get a Navigo Découverte. The tradeoff is that the Navigo card is free and if you lose it or it gets stolen, you're only on the hook for 8€ and your weekly/monthly fee is reimbursed. The Navigo Discovery on the other hand costs 5€ and if you lose it or have it stolen, you don't get your weekly/monthly fee back. The Navigo passes also requires you to have a photo for ID to glue onto the card. You can either print out your own photo, or do the lazy "make sure it works way" and use the photobooths found in the most major metro stations. It doesn't seem like the normal Navigo requires the photo but I'm not certain on that.
You can either order the Navigo Discovery online and have it mailed to you in France, which apparently takes 3 weeks, or just go to the station and buy it in 5 minutes. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't just buy it at the station. We went with the Navigo Discovery since it seemed far more straight forward and I don't mind the risk.
So once you have your properly sized photo (they're not too picky though), find a metro with a ticket attendant during the day. Most metro stops seem to have one. However before walking up to the window, you have to buy a Navigo Discovery "ticket" from the ticket vending machines. Use the roll bar to select Tickets, and at the bottom of the ticket list, you'll see an option to buy a Navigo Découverte. On the next screen you select how many you want to buy at 5€ a piece. You then proceed to buy it like any other metro ticket. At the end it spits out a ticket that you'll then take to the ticket attendant window (see this is what I couldn't find on any website, it's all about the details!). The person will take your Navigo Discovery ticket, and hunt around for one of the plastic Navigo cards to hand you.
The physical card is actually made up of two cards. One card is what you'll scan and recharge at the metro entrance to have the gate open. The other card needs to be kept with it, and is where you paste your photo onto, and sign. No idea why they don't just all do it on one card, but well that's just how it is. So after you open up the plastic wrapper, you take the RF card (with the chip embedded in it) and go back to the automatic ticket machines to now "load" your card. You can do it by the week or the month. The valid week always begins on Monday, so if you try this all on a Saturday, you either choose to use it for only 2 days (still paying full week price). (Update: If you do this after Thursday, you don't even get the option to load it for the rest of that week. The only option is to load it for the next week). Or you can use it for 7 days starting on the next Monday, but you'll have to use normal tickets still for that Saturday and Sunday. Same goes for the month pass, where it begins on the 1st of the month.
Loading the pass the first time is fairly simple. You put the card in the purple holder, and this time select the "Reload Navigo" option on the screen. The one slightly confusing part is where you pick the zone, since you hit the Validate button to select one zone, and then use the roll bar to highlight to the zones you want to cover, and press Validate to finish the selection. Typically this would be just zones 1-2 for Paris if you're a tourist, but my office is WAY out in the suburbs so I have to have zones 1-5 highlighted.
Interestingly as I had to buy the Navigo tickets, then load Kara's Navigo card, and then try to load my card, the machine actually declined my credit card on that 3rd transaction. I checked with the credit card company afterwards and they said it wasn't on their end, and it's worked fine since, so it must have been the ticket terminal. But luckily I had another card, and in the process, confirmed the Paris metro ticket stations (update: well, some of them anyways, your results may vary) still accept swipe only cards.
Re-loading the card was pretty easy. It already knows what zones you selected originally, so it basically just asks you to confirm you still want the same zones.
Update: I discovered that while I can re-load Kara's card (zones 1-2) just fine for the monthly rate, my US credit card was always rejected when trying to buy the monthly pass for me (zones 1-5). The only thing I can figure is that because the price is so high (113€) it just automatically rejects foreign and/or non-PIN credit cards. The first time I bought the month pass I had to re-load with cash, but now I use my French Carte Bleue bank card which works just fine.
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