Attend Meetups and Conferences, meet people and share your thoughts with them. You can also join local groups. That's how you can pair up with people who are more experienced. You can even contribute to any open source project, learn from other collaborators and you will end up learning a lot.
Don't. The Y510p has a really cheap screen. I know its price sounds enticing. I compared its screen with my Macbook Pro and it looks very "washed out".
but why don't you ask for the password on the main page.
because if new user enters a URL that already exists this can be quite annoying for him.
Also there must be some information that indicates the user that this URL already exist so go try another one.