I'd start by coming up with a project, a goal. What are your interests? Gaming, sports, cooking, art? Decide to make something web-based that pertains to whatev

I'd start by coming up with a project, a goal. What are your interests? Gaming, sports, cooking, art? Decide to make something web-based that pertains to whatever interests you have. Doesn't matter if you're reinventing the wheel. Now, start creating. Learn the necessary technologies as you go along, mixing in healthy doses of theory and best practices when you get the feeling there's a better way to do what you're trying. It's hard to learn technologies in isolation, when they have no meaningful connection to problems you're solving. So give yourself an interesting challenge that can be overcome with the tools you want to learn. If you're using automated tools along the way (installers, package managers, code scaffolding), consider doing what the tools do for you manually. Unravel things and get closer to the metal until you're satisfied. Consider sharing the source code of your project with others. Maybe nobody will take notice, but it will give you motivation to make your code beautiful. As far as specifics, Python strikes a nice balance among power, maturity, and marketability. MySQL is standard. Be sure to "unravel" your DB code into SQL without just relying on framework magic.