You can start with some books such as - Joomla 2.5 made easy - It's great for newbies who want to learn creating a Joomla 2.5 website quickly. It's Free. - Joomla Explained - an official publication of Joomla!, a step-by step, very detailed, logical and easy to understand book. It's not free. You can have more options in this link: http://www.joomlashine.com/blog/4-must-have-joomla-e-books-for-joomla-newbies.html If you love to watch video, you should follow this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=h...kNwUyfhMeqD3Zu5Z8MTM0MzgwODM0MUAxMzQzNzIxOTQx
Joomla 3.0 will be released this September. Hope that we will have Joomla 3.0 guideline as soon as possible I found a nice page to test Joomla 3.0. You should have a look: http://joomla30.joomlashine.com
Go through this website to learn on Joomla: http://www.joomlatutorials.com You can also learn here: http://hirejoomlaprogrammer.blogspot.com
I don't recommend to use joomla 3.0 yet because of a little number of resources (templates and extensions, etc.) for this version.
Yeah, at this time, Joomla 2.5 is recommended. I think we should only upgrade when Joomla 3.5 is released.
You can get only very basic information from that VTC website. You must pay for the rest of them so it is not good source of information, pretty expensive. I would recommend to use YouTube tutorials. There are a plenty of them.
Look there http://www.joomtalk.com/27-joomla-3-0-free-ebook.html The initial site is cocoate i guess. They also have a Joomla 2.5 pdf that was also cool
Maybe someone mentionned this one earlier http://www.joomlashine.com/blog/fre...-easy-a-pocket-manual-for-joomla-newbies.html