Thread:Project:Support desk/Non-developer's Guide to Git

I'm using Mediawiki software to maintain a couple private wikis. In the past I downloaded gz files and updated the sites manually. Now it seems that we're supposed to use git to keep things up to date. Installing new extensions any other way doesn't seem supported (unless I copy individual files manually, which can't be what anyone wants). Almost all the git related content here seems to be aimed at the developer, not the average site maintainer. I'm quite familiar with Linux and PHP but I'm new to git and I'm not quite getting it (or should that be gitting it?). Is there a non-developer's guide to git for Mediawiki? If not, there should be. I'm thinkin it would be something that walks through setting up and maintaining a mediawiki web site using git from the perspective of a site administrator?

Some specific questions:

I have installed git on my CentOS 6 machine and used "git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/core.git" to download MediaWiki core. One thing that wasn't mentioned on the Download from Git page is what directory I should be in when that is done or whether it matters. Is that meant to be done so that the resulting ./core directory is the actual wikimedia installation (i.e. the web directory)? Or do files get copied from there to the web tree (and if so, by git or manually)? Also, I don't see what "git checkout" actually does. Is it meant to checkout a copy of the files and put them somewhere? If so, where?