Tutorials

You should start using Capistrano by reading Getting Started then by examining the default deployment.. with that in mind; and once you understand the typical Execution Scope... some of the resources below should help you tie this together and really make the most of Capistrano.

If you're looking for a good place to start, try the Absolute Moron's Guide to Capistrano.

 Beginners

Capistrano with Rails 2.3

The advise contained in this page may not be relevant anymore, depending whether or not this has been fixed, or whether anyone has patched Capistrano yet.

Database Configuration

This, and other interesting solutions came up on this thread in the mailing list.

Custom Recipes

This method is what makes the railsless deploy gem possible:

Testing Capistrano

It's a good idea to test all of your code, and Capistrano is no exception - especially if you have custom tasks.

Deploying Non-Rails Apps

There is an alternative deploy.rb file available as part of this gem which can be used as a drop-in replacement for the one that ships with Capistrano with all the rails-centric assumptions removed, there may be a time in the future this makes its way into the Capistrano core.

Railsless Deploy (PHP, Perl, Python, etc)

Tomcat / WAR

Drupal

Wordpress

Kohana

Expression Engine