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So there isn’t really a cookie cutter deployment, save some best practices... and provisioning (below the web app level), information architecture, operational service offerings and governance will depend on your org/biz usage needs.

Small company or large? Who owns the farm? Will separate resource assist customers then farm admins? Who owns the site? Who supports what? Will site collection admin be handed out? What SLA like reach back or support services will be entertained/supported? User training, dev standards, marketing, support service portal/communications conduit planned out?

Somewhat cliche but you really need a strong partnership with or champion in informational management and business executives. If not you'll always be a tool looking for an audience and being used incorrectly (hammer jar opener/file share/bad relational database woes go here).

Note, I'm not Geoff and get no profit from you buying, but his book is amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-SharePoint-Planning-Adoption-Governance/dp/0735671648/
TL;DR how to support and structure SP services in an org. Even if you are a 2 man shop, skim it take away at least 5% of the content/concepts and you'll be golden'ish.

Would search through other posts here for more long winded answers from myself and others... but, many vs few site collections comes back to my aforementioned ownership questions (shared assets/dev effects go here) and capabilities of users (i.e. site collections are significant boundaries to power user dev/info sharing, IMO).

Good luck!

Oh, and careful on terms, not nitpicking but assuming you meant separate site collection*. Ie subsites/webs belong in site collections, site collections organize sites in the farm. In the ui sites are webs. Via PowerShell Sites are Site Collections, Sites/Subsites are webs... not at all confusing :). Welcome to SharePoint!

I realize you are working with 2010, but you may be able to use the same approach as from SP2016, so I will reference below, but if not, here are some links to 2010 resources:

http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups.aspx

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/install/create-a-user-profile-service-application

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5199.sharepoint-2010-creating-user-profile-service-application-with-solution-to-most-common-issue.aspx

This snippet is from page 341 of Vlad Catrinescu and Trevor Seward's, Deploying SharePoint 2016, which I recommend getting if you will continue working with SharePoint. It's a great resource I keep next to me.

$sa = New-SPProfileServiceApplication -Name "User Profile Service Application" -applicationpool "SharePoint Web Services Default" -ProfileDBName 'Profile_DB_2013' -SocialDBName 'Social_DB_2013' -ProfileSyncDBName 'Sync_DB'

We then need to create Service Application Proxy by using the following cmdlet.

New-SPProfileServiceApplicationProxy -Name "User Profile Service Application Proxy" -ServiceApplication $sa -DefaultProxyGroup

You can purchase their book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Deploying-SharePoint-2016-Configuring-Maintaining/dp/1484219988

Please note, as with anything like this, the names of service applications, application pools, and databases, are all subjective and will need to be determined by your existing environment.

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I recommend getting a book to walk you through this. I really liked Professional Sharepoint 2013 Administration (Wrox Press), which was recommended to us by our Sharepoint consultant. I had tried to set up Sharepoint before by using the wizard (never do this by the way!), but it was great to have a step-by-step walkthrough, much longer and more detailed than what you can find online. Following the guide exactly I had a perfect starting point.

No programming necessary, it's all out of box functionality.

Here's a tutorial that covers the unique ID and form saving I was talking about. It's written for InfoPath 2010, but things aren't so different in 2013:
http://wonderlaura.com/2012/01/01/infopath-save-draft-form-functionality-a-better-way/

When you build your form, you'll then want to add another button called "Copy" or something with the following rules:

• Action rule to set the unique id field so it's no longer the same. If you're using now just copy the same rule to this button, and it'll change because Now() has changed. Or just have it add a one or something to the previous file name.
  
• If desired, add more action rules for each field you want to not carry ovier to set them to be "" (blank).
  
  Laura Rodgers has some great beginning InfoPath tutorials on her page and she co-wrote a book I found invaluable when I was starting out with SP & InfoPath and had no clue: Using Microsoft InfoPath 2010 with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Step by Step . At the time, that was the only book I could really find that had focus on InfoPath specifically, and it's actually really well done.
  
  Also, check out the SharePoint at RackSpace channel, lots of good beginner tutorials there too.

Todd Klindt and Shane Young's book is excellent, as is Bill English's compendium.

For the actual exam I just used the study guide http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-SharePoint-Configuration-Study-Guide/dp/0470627018/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1342444469&sr=8-2&keywords=mcts+sharepoint.

Honestly the best study guide is experience.

A million times this ; http://www.amazon.com/Automating-SharePoint-2010-Windows-PowerShell/dp/0470939206

This is a fantastic place to begin your Sharepoint Powershell adventures :)

Check around your local city to see if there's a SharePoint User's Group.

Then, when you have a specific problem like, "My team want's to store documents, but I have no idea what metadata is" or "My team says they can't find documents on search" or "I need to add this to a page and have no idea how" post over here and we can point you in the right direction.

As everyone has said: Lynda.com is great.

Otherwise, I don't recommend any particular books - but if you really want one then buy the Step-By-Step book. I actually work right next to the largest book store in the pacific northwest, so I'm very familiar with the titles out there. Unfortunately, none of the books do an excellent job clearly illustrating how to build business solutions on SharePoint, and the books that are project-specific aren't great as a reference resource. Then, there's the issue of if you're actually going to crack open a book or if you'll just google for answers - all of the book authors are also bloggers, so what is published in books is typically on the net, too.

I would recommend Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 . It's a good read even if you're not going for the certification.

If the training materials are for SharePoint admins or server admins, I recommend these books:

• PowerShell for SharePoint 2013 How-To
  
• Exploring Microsoft SharePoint 2013: New Features & Functions
  
  For end users, I like the SharePoint Shepherd's Guides.
  
  If you buy two sets of each of those books and let people pass them around, then you should have at least $200 remaining for beer.

Below are the books we have. If you would like one let me know.

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator's Companion

SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action

SharePoint Server 2010 Administration 24 Hour Trainer

Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2010 Step by Step

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Administrator's Pocket Consultant

SharePoint 2010 All-in-One For Dummies

SharePoint 2010 Development For Dummies 1st Edition

Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning

Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint

I've found this book to be enormously helpful, especially chapter 3 - "Installing and Configuring SharePoint" which walks you through building the SP server farm from scratch: https://www.amazon.com/Professional-SharePoint-Administration-Shane-Young/dp/1118495810

I just completed a 2007 - 2013 migration project, and while I had prior SharePoint experience, I didn't know much about 2013. We would never been able to complete the project without this reference.

I have this one by Gary Lapointe:

http://www.amazon.com/Automating-SharePoint-2010-Windows-PowerShell/dp/0470939206/

and it's pretty good. It's very large but the beginning is a primer on PowerShell and should get you enough up to speed.

I just released a book on deploying SharePoint 2016:

https://www.amazon.com/Deploying-SharePoint-2016-Configuring-Maintaining/dp/1484219988/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480399846&sr=8-1&keywords=deploying+sharepoint+2016

/spam

Compared to 2013 wrt Service Apps, not really any difference.

Gary Lapointe, its likely if you googled PowerShell and SharePoint his name came up.

http://www.amazon.com/Automating-SharePoint-2010-Windows-PowerShell/dp/0470939206

http://blog.falchionconsulting.com/