Guitar Help for Beginners...

Both. I you learn chords you will be learning songs and vice versa. You can learn and practice scales for leading.

Review and follow the lessons here at GuitarNoise and also the songs for beginners.

Both.

Watch videos too. They've helped me the most.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JustinSandercoe (The best on Youtube)
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=geetar01 (Pretty good for the chords IMO)

Also listen to music...LISTEN. Hear it. Listen to the guitar, and hear what is happening. Someday you might be playing around on guitar and you might say "hey...wait a minute, didn't that happen in that song?"

I've been playing since January. And I'm very good at playing individual notes. And I'm getting much better at chords. I'll honestly say I haven't focused on chords enough, but it's been slowly catching on.

And make sure you're efficient at strumming.

And don't worry about being too fast. Just play your own speed for now. And make sure to stay in time though, that's important. Don't try to be too fast. Keep the pace.

Well, learn chords to learn songs, but learn songs to learn chords. If you know nothing right now, I would say to start by learning the basic open chords first - G, C, E, A, D. Once you can do those a bit, you can play TONS of songs! In fact, just knowing 2 or 3 of those will get you playing tons of songs, or strum something you just make up! Have fun :D

If you are interested in learning the blues,This is the best book I ever came across(sold at guitar center) its called "Blues you can use)..It will teach the blues scales and patterns and immedietly get you playing.

what i would recommend is to find simplyfied tabs of the songs you want to learn (ie chords not tabs) and learn the chords you need, then spend a fair bit of time trying to make your fingers remember where to go, and just randomly change from chord to chord and try to get it as smooth as possible, then its very important to get a smooth strumming pattern, even if its only a very simple one. the most complicated chords in the world are still going to sound bad with a dodgey strumming pattern.

once youve got all these going for you your well on your way to covering your favourite songs!

Both.

Watch videos too. They've helped me the most.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JustinSandercoe (The best on Youtube)
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=geetar01 (Pretty good for the chords IMO)

Also listen to music...LISTEN. Hear it. Listen to the guitar, and hear what is happening. Someday you might be playing around on guitar and you might say "hey...wait a minute, didn't that happen in that song?"

I've been playing since January. And I'm very good at playing individual notes. And I'm getting much better at chords. I'll honestly say I haven't focused on chords enough, but it's been slowly catching on.

And make sure you're efficient at strumming.

And don't worry about being too fast. Just play your own speed for now. And make sure to stay in time though, that's important. Don't try to be too fast. Keep the pace.

Saw them. Thanks.

Start here with this Absolute Beginner Lesson.

And welcome to the musical madhouse!