How To Go Further?

I've been messing around with PHP for a few years now. Nothing to serious, basicly as a hobby and for use in some small jobs. I'm very familiar with the basic syntax, I've built simple mySQL driven content manegment systems, interfaced with the file system on the server, made guest books, and tweaked forums, but I am looking to take my knowledge of PHP to the next level. I know I could just sit down w/ a book on PHP and read up on more stuff, but I feel that I learn better from doing projects. What sorts of things would you guys recomend trying in order to learn more and move from being a hobby PHP programmer towards the guru level?

Perhaps you could find an area of coding that you are interested in, for example sockets and either make a project using that or you could probably help out on a exsisting project.

Or if you have done projects in the past try combining them, eg if you have built a web based ftp client then try and combine that with a user authentication system. Then build up from there. (That is what i do when i want to work on more complex projects, I am by far no guru ;) )

Ya, definately pick something that interests you, and then think of something fun or cool that you could do with it.

My big focus was on sockets, hence, I studied up on sockets, and networking protocols and such. I decided it would be fun to make a bot for a messenger service, I started with MSN, then moved to AIM. I learned an immense ammount of knowledge from those 2 projects on sockets, the workings of the internet, protocols, and of course, how to make PHP do interesting things. I also do things, like if I have a boring repetitive task on the computer that I have to do often, I try to automate it, that does alot, its gives you a practical program you can reuse, and lets you explore PHP for other uses besides web based things.

I was once considering making an msn bot, you wouldnt happen to know of a website that provide the info you need to connect to msn would you?

http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/index.php might be what you need.

Ya, I found that later. I did mine with packet sniffing and an outdated white paper.

I highly recommend using both that documentation and a packet sniffer, that really helps you understand whats going on

If you have made a guestbook, look into creating a simple forum. My first project was a forum, and now that I look back on it, I realize how unsafe and poorly coded it was, but it worked and I figured out the basic logic behind an advanced websystem... If you decide that you enjoy creating web apps, try making a forum... you will learn a lot of the basic concepts behind web developement from user authentication, to administrative security measures, to dynamic pagination... a forum has everything.