Beginning CakePHP

I'm finally taking the plunge into CakePHP. The Rails-like Rapid Development architecture has allured me for some time. However, on starting I immediately came across trivial questions such as how do I create static pages? how do I create an Admin area? how do I send HTML emails? etc etc... I stumbled upon the 21 things I learned about CakePHP article which quickly answered all my newbie questions. A real time saver!