The official GPlates user-manual is written by GPlates users in the EarthByte Project (primarily Rhiannon McKeon), in close collaboration with the GPlates software development team.
As well as the on-line HTML version of the manual, there is now a downloadable PDF version available.
Tutorials for accomplishing specific tasks in GPlates can be found on the EarthByte site.
Instructions on how to compile GPlates from source may be found in the GPlates source-code releases, in the files:
DEPS.Linux and BUILD.Linux (on Linux)
DEPS.OSX and BUILD.OSX (on MacOS X)
BUILD.Windows (on Windows)
Apple enthusiast and star GPlates user Christian Heine has written a comprehensive guide to building GPlates from source on MacOS X without package managers (PDF, 694K). Published on February 26, 2009, this describes the steps to compile GPlates 0.9.4 on MacOS X without using Fink or MacPorts. Thanks Christian!