If you're friend is really a beginner, may I suggest him to look for more general forums like JW with a photography section, those barbarian talks about CA, apertures, RAW format you can see on many dedicated forums could be disturbing at first.
If the person already knows the basics, Dpreview's forum could be the place to be, although it's mostly frequented by professionals and "amateurs" who tend to take some amazing pictures I'm sure basic questions will also be answered.
There are many subforums where you can discuss about everything, from lighting and retouching to lenses, sony cameras, nikon, canon etc.
It's just a bit old-fashionned so browsing could be difficult at first
http://www.dpreview.com/
No index either ...
I'm also used to reading photozone's board but it's quite a little one and the discussions are limited to recent lens tests and so on, I guess that's not what you're looking for :bah:
http://www.photozone.de/active/forum...st.jsp?forum=1