Welcome, and as stated before, you have come to the right place. My guess is that your going to find answers to your questions, as well as answers to the qustions that you hadn't even thought of yet.
As someone who was new to the site not too long ago, my first suggestion is to just poke around a lot and become familiar with all the forums and sub-forums. I didn't do that initially and then many months after joining I was finding new pockets of interesting insights that I had missed.
Most importantly...have fun and don't be shy. I've found that people on more than willing to help us new guys.