I'm a newbie to DNA

Though I've attended conferences on DNA and read a bit about it, I really didn't get involved until I broke down and got my autosomal dna done at FTDNA.com. 

From my most recent attempt at educating myself, I attended a seminar (in two sessions) of four hours each.  The presenter said that right now, the easiest route is through Ancestry.com's autosomal dna program.  Why?  You might ask. 

Ancestry has a lot of family trees.  They also have a database of like 3 million or 4, by now, probably, of people who have sent in their dna.  They have developed some tools that make it pretty clear how to find out your matches.

Heritage is also doing some kind of wild things and might be really good for you if you have European or Middle Eastern.

I think each of us just has to make a decision and carry through with it and I chose FTdna.com a company I felt like would be a good one for me.

There are also folks working on different programs that will allow you to put your "kit" info in and they will triangulate it or compare it.  One of those programs is GEDMatch; you submit a gedcom of your family trees (everyone is supposed to do that) and they have a large amount of folks using them, also.  So, I recommend getting invested in this Genetic Genealogy thing.  Make sure you menfolk go for your Y-Chromosome study as well as your autosomal.  Ladies, get your Mitochondrial (Mother's line) done and do your autosomal.  As we obtain more and more people in the database, it will be easier to find our relatives.  And our descendants will also be able to have that opportunity to uncover their families and ancestors, as well as cousins.

https://isogg.org/wiki/Beginners'_guides_to_genetic_genealogy

How to find resources (genealogically helpful resources) for Locations aka "Places"

There is magic in the air!  You just have to find it.  Just as Worldcat.org is a magnificent place to find the holdings of libraries far and near, so is the FamilySearch Wiki a wonderful key to the world of resources for locations. 

Mathew Bishop lived most of his adult life in Marion County, Alabama.  Because he was born in 1807 in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the records for his forefathers [and mothers] are a bit of a mystery, right now.

I decided to learn as much as I could about Marion County and the Bishop family in Marion County and hope that it will lead me back to some clues for his genealogy in South Carolina.  There are several ways of going about that quest but FamilySearch Wiki is a good beginning.

I know I've talked about this before, but I truly appreciate the function of the Wiki at FS.  And I challenge you to pick a place of significance for your ancestors and put it into the search box and see what links you can lean upon to find out more.

Of course, you will also want to check Google and WorldCat and anything else you can think of, but at FamilySearch, you are apt to get not only links but also information relevant to the topic, relevant to your research. It's in the menu under "SEARCH".