[Dovecot] Confusion when trying to set up a first postfix+dovecot mailserver

[Hans J. Albertsson]

I'm trying to set up a first test for a dovecot + postfix (+ many other 
things) mail server for about 1000 accounts, and I keep stumbling on 
confusing inconsistencies in the HowTo documents I'm trying to follow.

I tried to do a simple setup with virtual users using a howto saying it 
was for just that and that it's for Dovecot 2.x, and it shows a few text 
chunks to put in files, and then says it's better to do the changes in 
the example-config conf file....

And then the whole structure of config files and dirs is totally 
different from what is implied in the howto. And of course it won't run. 
Probably because of the structure of a conf.d dir is multiple files, and 
the instructions are explicitly written for the case of having a single 
conf file.

Can anyone suggest an order in which to read docs that will take me thru 
w/o being totally confusing?
I would very much like to be able to enable bit by bit, rather than have 
to understand all of dovecot before I can even begin to test it.

P.S: I want to setup a server using 
postfix+dovecot+tls+virtualusers+maildir+dspam+mailman, at least that's 
the target I'm aiming for.
Please suggest a good HowTo for this setup that will not be too confusing.
Also, Sorry if I sound like a whining kid: I am new to dovecot and 
postfix, but I was a software support engineer for Sun for ages, and I 
should really be able to manage this if I just had some consistent and 
non-confusing HowTo or Tutorial to follow as a first try.