If I had my 'druthers, there would be clearly written explanatory documentation in each of the example folders, explaining what is being done, how to do it, and possible additional references.
OK, you're right - I'm on my soap-box again.
Getting on your soap box is fine. But, read through this whole thread again. You haven't explained what you want to do with your ethernet shield. How anyone is expected to anticipate everything that one might want to do with every variation of ethernet shield, and cover that in a tutorial is beyond me. Why you are berating people who have spent their time and their money to develop and host a tutorial that fails to anticipate how you want to use your ethernet shield in your environment with your network/firewall/ISP provider also escapes.
OK. I'll get off my soapbox now. If you post a question like "How do I use my Ethernet shield to connect to server this-or-that and execute script these-or-those", you'll get an answer. If you post a question like "How do I configure router this-or-that to assign an IP address to my Arduino", you'll get an answer. If you post specific questions, you'll get specific answers.
Vague questions do not get good answers.
Remember that an ethernet shield is just a piece of the puzzle. By the time that you know you want/need one, you are expected to know something about networking, something about configuring your network, etc.