PoRco.

If your looking for hard theory then JavaScript: The Definitive Guide is a safe choice. I read good reviews on it. Many people complain about lack of examples though. I like examples more than theory

I'd be interested in this as well. Specifically Ontario ..

Wow, I love that idea. Now I have something to look forward to ! Thank you very very much ! lol.

Heh, my bad. Thanks for all your help though Daniel

Some people can't concentrate as well when music is playing. Personally, as much as I enjoy listening to music when I code, I find myself pausing it whenever I get stuck or I need to figure out something. Others don't really need to. So rather than ask people what they do and follow them, just do what works for you. Try listening to music while coding, especially if it can rid of that headache.

This would be useful in the long run. Thanks for the share.

Would they even bother with a small site like mine? I'm thinking, even if they do.. it will be well after I get the experience I want. Posting links etc would be something I'd enjoy doing, would make the learning process far better. Suggestions?

It can be anything you want. Create a blog where you can write about stuff you like. Create a database for your recipes. Create a gallery for your photos. Create an index for music/movie collection. There are lots of possibilities. All of the things I just mentioned can be done very simply, but do also have plenty of potential for making more advanced and feature rich. If you actually want a website that is externally accessible then you do need to purchase a domain name and hosting. However, you can also run a webserver on your own computer for local development. I'd recommend developing locally under any circumstances anyway. You can install the individual components (Apache, PHP, MySQL and whatever you need) manually, or you can use prepackaged bundles such as XAMPP or WampServer on Windows, or MAMP on OS X. Linux based operating systems will have a package manager which you can use to easily install a web server. Thanks again, I've always wanted to create a website that posted a list of my fav movies and tv shows and along with redirecting links to where people can download them, but I thought it was illegal.

By simple projects, do you mean like those small web-apps ? Or perhaps just a website that is about something I wanna talk about/share. I don't care whether it's interesting or not tbh, as long as I get some experience in Won't making a website involve buying a domain etc? Thank you for your reply Daniel, really appreciate it.

Hey guys, I have this strong passion to learn all I can about web designing. I've just recently begun to go through tutorials and e-books. I realize that this is not enough and I need to apply it somewhere to learn and come across problems that I normally would anyway. The question is, where do I do this? Any volunteer sites or do I try making my own website.. just really confused as to where to begin. I was doing a google search and a thread PHPfreaks came up. Where you guys were talking about how it is best to learn within a learning community. I started looking up other threads and posts, and I found that I really like it here. You guys are great. This is my first post, and I'm here to stay for a LONG time.