Any site ideas!

Here are an idea i got whilst watching repeats of changing rooms and drinking cold cups of coffee ...

PaintDry.org -----> Where you are able to watch paint dry all day long! You can choose the colour of the paint , the type of paint (eg: gloss, emulsion etc) and even what surface has been painted!

You don;t need to make a site to build your skills. A proper site requires content and I guarantee you will get bogged down with content (which is often just words) rather than anything useful.

.'. I say for this situation, building an actual site would be more detrimental to your cause than anything else. So I say make bits of sites:

Want to work on graphics for a bit? Pick some colours, pick a style & a few key words to define the style and get drawing. You don't even need to slice the damn thing if you don't want to.

Practice your html/CSS: I'd say just do layout after layout after layout. Try to do the same thing with less code next time. Get everything as neat and clean as you can (also check for validation).

Scripting: Be it server-side or client side then define a few handy functions. Code them, streamline them, then make them reuseable. Make some of the common scripts you see everywhere.

You don't NEED to do any of this. But practice makes perfect and this is the way to get practice IMO.

I had a formal education in programming. Alhtough, I had little training in web development. Very simple stuff. I got a job as a web developer based on my programming background. Exactly as RTM said above that's how they brought me up to speed.

It's taken me about 8 months, but I consider myself able to code at or above the level of my peers. I still have <u>much</u> to learn. But, I think RTM's path to enlightenment is right on.

Granted it took me 8 months, but you've got to realize I've worked in a corporate environment with some fairly complex issues to deal with in regards to how my pages have to be built.

play any online games??? make a clan webpage if you know php its alot of fun to script the page so its like a community.... aka forum sort of but you make the whole thing

and rtm223 is talking something like this i think... i love doing it ^^
http://www.band-host.com/other/page.gif