Getting started with Canto is easy. Most of this is covered in man canto, but it seems like it should be online as well.
Right after you download and install Canto, I'm sure you're eager to get going. If you just run canto, it will start up, generate an example configuration (~/.canto/conf.example), fetch those feeds, and startup the interface as usual. This is to let you get a feeling for the program quickly, before messing around with the configuration. Here's the output for conf.example:
# Auto-generated by canto because you don't have one.
# Please copy to/create ~/.canto/conf
columns = width / 70
add_feed("Slashdot", "http://rss.slashdot.org/slashdot/Slashdot")
add_feed("Reddit", "http://reddit.com/.rss")
add_feed("KernelTrap", "http://kerneltrap.org/node/feed")
add_feed("Canto", "http://codezen.org/canto/feeds/latest")
You can find a list of the default keybinds on the configuration page, to help you navigate.
So you've messed around with the interface and want to put a little effort into a config. The first place to check is the configuration page, to help you get on your way.
The most basic config (like the conf.example generated if you ran without a config), is just a series of add_feed calls, as you can see above.
If you store your feeds in OPML format, you can use canto -i <filename> to automatically import your feeds to your config, or source_opml() to add them from an OPML file at run time.
If you store your feeds in a list of URLs, you can use source_urls() to read the list from a file at run time.
In order for canto to receive updates, it's fetching program, canto-fetch must be run often. You can achieve this either by adding
* * * * * canto-fetch
to your crontab, meaning that canto-fetch will be run once a minute while the computer is running, or if you don't use cron you can add
canto-fetch -db
to your startup scripts (.xinitrc, etc.), this will make canto-fetch into a daemon and run itself every minute. You can also run canto-fetch -db by hand, or just run canto -u to force an update every time you run. It's up to you.
For more advanced configuration, review the configuration page. Also, be aware that Canto is highly theme-able, which you can read about on the style page. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me (information below).