EVE New Citizens Q&A

It may be best to direct them to decent PVP corporations instead of trying to teach them directly. I have found in the past that playing with real life friends can be difficult if your interests are not aligned. Sometimes it's better to find your own communities, especially while learning the basics. Once they are hooked they may be more interested in doing stuff with you, or at least talking EVE with you.

To the OP, I highly recommend you check out this site which has some great info on the different ships. Locate the Rifter in the frigate section and get a sense of what it is good at, and what it isn't.

Personally, I prefer both the slasher and the breacher to the rifter. IMO they are more focused in their bonuses and slot layouts, giving you the chance to abuse their strengths, whereas the rifter is probably the most "jack of all trades" frigate there is. It can be hard to make it excel at a single goal. This doesn't mean you can't use it - just have to be a bit creative with your fitting and fight selection.

Faction Warfare space is definitely the place to go for some frig v. frig action. Just keep in mind that while you may be solo, others may not be. Expect to get blobbed occasionally and learn to use d-scan to assess your surroundings. I will also echo others and say that joining a PVP focused corporation is sure to help you learn faster. Solo PvP in EVE can be very fun, but also very frustrating - especially if you are new and trying to learn the ropes. It helps to have people around to tell you what went wrong, how to avoid it in the future, and help you succeed. Once you are very comfortable in your ship you can branch out into solo pvp if that is your interest.

Edit: Regarding the test server. It can be useful for testing out fits. Sometimes a fit looks great on paper but it turns out it is too difficult to fly - for instance an active tank frigate with a high dps tank but so few hitpoints that it gets volleyed. However, as stated it is mainly for practicing with yourself and not a "real" PVP environment. Incidentally, OP I highly recommend you download EFT or Pyfa and use them to test out your fits (I prefer the alternative mirror link). It's important to start mentally linking up the DPS/tank numbers with the performance in-game. That way, when you add an extra gyrostabilizer, you can see exactly what the performance increase is and what the cost will be and predict how your fit will perform in different situations.