Reddit reviews PostGIS in Action, 2nd Edition

You'll need to learn PostgreSQL first. (You probably already know that PostGIS is an extension of PostgreSQL). You will need to get an instance of PostgreSQL running, and then create the database, users/roles, schemas, tables and views you want for your project, like you would with any other RDBMS. It's relatively straightforward to use PostGIS after that. The extension adds a few new field data types (geometry and geography) which can store spatial data features. It also adds a lot of new functions that operate on spatial data. These are what you use to do spatial queries. You can see the full list in chapter 8 of the PostGIS documentation:

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Chapter 8. PostGIS Special Functions Index

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When your database is set up, you'll need to learn how to add data spatial data to a PostGIS database. There are ways to do that with some tools that ship with PostGIS installations. You can also do it through QGIS. I would suggest, after you're comfortable with PostgreSQL, going through the PostGIS documentation itself. There is also a book that you could check out: PostGIS in Action.

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Finally, I would suggest taking very good notes. Write down the SQL commands that you use to every step along the way to build up the database and keep a record of the SQL that you use to query spatial data. I still refer back to my original notes every time I set up a new PostGIS database.

PostGIS in Action by Regina O. Obe and Leo S. Hsu is fairly good, although could be a bit hard to start from zero without a bit of administration / sql knowledge.