In need of some basic firewall guides.

I'm looking into firewalls now and I am a complete noob when it comes to firewalls, networking, and the like. So I was wondering whether anyone had any good forum posts, threads, articles, etc, to help explain firewalls and their functions. I understand that this seems like a simple Google search away but let me explain a bit more. I have been reading a bunch of things and understand that firewalls control ports, programs, can control what websites a specific program has access to, etc. All of the articles basically say the same thing. What I don't know about is different approaches(white listing programs, controlling ports, etc) to using a firewall to secure your network traffic along with networking protocols. Basically I have a basic-decent understanding of how firewalls work, but how do I know what kind of policies to enforce? Despite what my signature says, I'm running Windows 7 in a vm to test various things and so I was looking into Windows Firewall. After that, when I have some decent knowledge, I figured I would try out various programs to figure out what I like. Any other suggestions as to how to approach firewalls from a noobs standpoint?

 

Hi crusher,
Hope this helps you in your quest.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=142036

 

Off topic posts removed. The above guide should of be good help

 

I've read this a few times but it's not quite what I'm looking for. Maybe I'm just being too... difficult. Haha. I actually found a few decent links and so I will be reading them.