How to start from Scratch ?

[eluser]woits.com[/eluser]
Dear Members.
I never Used any PHP Framework. I just have knowledge of PHP. And i have installed xampp. Apache 5.4 i think there is. MySql server is also installed.

How to install CodeIgniter?

I have copied CodeIgniter folder to htdocs of XAMPP

So how i can access it?

using http://localhost/CodeIgniter/

or someway else? it just shows welcome screen. How i can start project in CodeIgniter?

What is benifit for this?

Thanks