As you hold the guitar in playing position the bars running at right angles to the strings are frets.
As Kirk suggested, id get into some of the open chord shapes first.
Get the hang of the major (well common i should say) chords,
C A G E D Am Em Dm
that will open you up to playing thousands of songs... Then look at barre chords, F & B and their minors, then the rest of it becomes a lot easier
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/openchords.html
Kirk also has a heap of pictures of a lot of the common chords being played
http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/chord_picsA.html
that should help with the fingering...