Raid groups have changed as new expansions were released. Current raiding options include either 10 or 25 man groups and the dungeons essentially scale in difficulty based on the size of the raid. The number of monsters/bosses doesn't change but the health and damage is reduced for 10 man raids. Additionally, the amount of "loot" is decreased for 10 man raids. For some fights, the mechanics may change slightly to allow for limited raid size composition. As an example, a fight in the WotLK Naxaramas instance required two priest (preferably shadow spec) to mind control units that would then tank the boss. Since a 10 man raiding party wouldn't likely have two shadow priest, the 10 man version provided crystals that any party member could use to handle the necessary mind controlling mechanic of the fight.
As for queuing differences for 5 man dungeons versus raids, you are correct that raids require you to travel to the instance entrance (or get summoned by other party members already there). With Cataclysm, changes to the queuing system for 5 man dungeons also requires that you at least visit the instance entrance once before being able to queue for it, but after the discovery, you can queue for it from anywhere in the game (as long as you meet level and item level requirements). To locate any of the instance/raid entrances, a useful site to check is wowwiki.com This wiki style site includes topics on the instances and the content (bosses, trash mobs, history, etc...). Another site, wowhead.com, provides gear, quest, and instance information as well. I tend to go with wowwiki for instance information but other sites have good information too.
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