A couple people asked me to upload a cross section view of the tile, backerboard, waterproofing membrane, etc. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel, I figured I’d post some useful references that I used throughout the process. First of all I’d like to say that I’d recommend going with a thinbed installation method. The old school way is to have a thick vinyl-like product (Chloraloy is one option) underneath a thick bed of “deck mud.” For a variety of reasons I chose to go with a thinbed installation instead and would suggest the same for anyone else. The thinbed route means either using a sheet membrane (NobleSeal, Kerdi, etc.) or a liquid membrane (RedGard, Hydroban, etc.). We went with Kerdi, but the prep is essentially the same regardless of what you choose.

Schluter’s installation handbook

A bit about thinbed vs. thickbed from Noble company:

The thinbed video on Noble’s website is simple and well done:

And of course no tile-related post would be complete without a reference to the John Bridge forum which has an abundance of great info, including these basic how-to posts:

Hopefully these links will help you in figuring out how to build and tile your shower.
If there is a demand for it I’ll go over the various options for waterproofing (Kerdi, Nobleseal, RedGard, Wedi, Hydroban, etc.).