I'm having a hard time understanding how to translate the staff to the fret board. For instance, if there is one line under the staff with a note going right through it...that's a C; on the fret board, I've got a c at the 8th fret of the e string, first fret of the b string, 5th of the g string...and so on. How do I know which C on the fret board is indicated by which C on the staff?
David's Rosetta Stone also gives a guide to the positions toward the end of the article.
Well we all shine on--like the moon and the stars and the sun.
-- John Lennon
Good advice thus far. I would also recommend staying in first position to avoid the many unisons which can be confusing at first. In first position, there is only one unison; the open B string is the same note as the B on the third string in the fourth fret.
If you want to be good, practice. If you want to be great, you must constantly change the way you think.
If you want to see what the entire fretboard looks like:
http://people.freenet.de/greybeard/Allnotes.pdf
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The short answer is, "You don't". Not really any way. Some classical guitar scores do notate it for you by putting a string number above the note, but one of the great things about guitar is that you have many choices for playing a particular note, and each has a very slightly different tone, so you can do cool things with it.
The longer answer is that typically, you play the one that is easiest to play with the notes surrounding it. For a beginner, that almost always is the one most easily reachable in "open position", or where your first finger is assigned any note on the first fret, second, and note on the second, and so on. Open position (and first position, but that's a different topic) has the advantage that it covers a lot of range, right in the middle of the tonal scale. So start there.
Also, in our FAQ, there are two charts that can help. Look at #1 or #2, depending on your needs.
https://www.guitarnoise.com/help.php
-Laz
