Over the last couple of years UV layout in Maya has changed for the better. In this course we're going to be taking a look at some of those changes as we UV map an entire character
Get the low poly rigging tutorial. It does teach you the basics of rigging plus some advanced stuff, and blend shapes. If you don't want to buld the character in advance I could send you mine (it's not textured though) There is a really good tutorial in the book maya 6.0 the complete reference. I don't know any links to online tutorials but im sure if you google it you'll find plenty of stuff.
Creating a full fk/ik skeleton is (at least for me) tooo complicated to explain it in a few sentences. So I guess look for an online tutorial buy a book or get one from SM
here it is, if you want it real nice you would have to spend a bit more work on it, but I couldn't be bothered since I was mainly interested in rigging it, so I did not model for example his fingers neatly.
Also I didn't texture it but you don't need that to gig anyway. I think you should triangulate it before starting the tut though.