Hey moonlight,
I suggest that you start with Chris' aforementioned Chord Theory: An Introduction tutorial. That whole series of theory lessons is awesome, albeit pretty intense for a beginner. I still need to go back frequently to review some of the lessons. In my experience, trying to memorize (into long term memory) an entire fretboard diagram of notes is a brutal proposition for most of us mere mortals. Without the fretboard reference points provided by knowing chords, I just keep forgetting portions of the fretboard, over and over. So instead, I learned a bunch of chords first, and now make sure to pay attention to the notes that make up the chords that I play, every time I play them during practice. I do the same thing with a few basic scales. So far, so good. I'm making progress on memorizing the fretboard... slowly. Remember that everybody learns in slightly (sometimes radically) different ways so it may take some experimentation to figure out how to best learn the fretboard.
So, the short answer is "No", you don't need to memorize the fretboard before learning chords.
Sascha
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