Golarion is the setting.
It's something of a "kitchen-sink" setting with many countries that each express a different genre, often hewing closely to the history of fantasy role-playing games. Some regions are very traditional, some regions push the envelope of what many gamers are comfortable with in a fantasy setting. They're all fairly self-contained, though.
You'd be best served to find out where in Golarion your campaign will be set, and read up on that. Reading about Numeria won't help you at all if the game is set in Sargava.
As a new player, you should know about the PRD (link is at left also). It has all the rules, even gets the new books as they come out (sometimes with a few weeks/months delay from the printing). For setting info you'll need to either buy the books or rely on fan wiki type things, some of which are quite good.
Evil Lincoln, the link you posted is the old wiki, the main contributors have moved to www.pathfinderwiki.com over a year ago
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The planet is Golarion, and most of the Paizo-written material is focused on the Inner Sea Region. While there are a whole bunch of very diverse countries and areas within the Inner Sea Region, probably the most important is the city of Absalom. It probably wouldn't be too far fetched for your character to be from Absalom, no matter where your game takes place.
All those articles are from my favorite setting wiki, though the one Evil Lincoln linked to is good too.
There's also this thread of basic facts about the Golarion setting. That link goes to my list of facts, but check out the other comments there as well. They're good.
Chief Technical Officer
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I will be playing in a PFRPG game in the near future. I don't have money to buy the books, nor do I have the time to read a thousand Wiki articles. I DO want to create a back story for my character, though. I'm looking for any info I can get on the PF setting.
Does Pathfinder have a signature setting, like Shadowrun's Seattle or Exalted's Nexus? Any help in getting info on the PF setting?
The main book you'll want is the Inner Sea World Guide.
StaticChris, if you're a player rather than a GM, you may want to take a look at the Inner Sea Primer, which has no spoilers of GM secrets, is a shorter book, and has a lot of new rules bits you can add to your character.
The thing about Golarion - specifically the Inner Sea region - is that each nation/region has a theme. Want a Renaissance-Gothic-type? You're from Ustalav. Want a third son from an ancient noble family in a decaying empire? You're from Taldor. Want a swashbuckling pirate-sailor type? You're either from the Shackles or the Varisian coast.
If you don't want to go hunting through the wiki and reading all the articles for lack of time ( I think it's a great way to spend my time, frankly) then post your character concept here, and you'll likely get several suggestions on appropriate regions - that'll make your wiki time more specifically spent.