Well this is how I use it (and I'm living on there at the moment)
Find some active boards that are into the thing you're into. A lot of them are US based, sometimes that doesn't matter, sometimes it does.
Ideas to start with might be UK Spinners, UK Classifieds.
There's just chat and stuff going on on the boards, so you join in, or you start a topic and ask for help.
Most boards have 'pages' at the top (a tab at the top) which has info in for beginners, resources etc.
Then there's the very wonderful search option. For example, you can search for all knitting patterns, for adults, that you can knit with 500m of fingering (sock) weight yarn and so on. I find that's incredibly useful.
Much more dangerously, you can search people's stashes for yarn they're prepared to sell
(contributing to the SABLE we were talking about in Fleecewife's thread
)
Some people use it to record all their yarn, so they can see how bad their stash is
You can search for people you know. SITN is Castlemilk on Rav and I am, unenterprisingly, JayKayG. Then you can see what they're busy with at the moment......
Before long you will spend more time on there than on your projects!