How can I find someone willing to let me, an amateur, design a website for them for practice?

With a client who's always pushing the boundaries, a site that started out as a simple project can turn into a death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenario where the thing never gets finished because they keep asking you to tweak things or add new stuff. On the other hand, if the website starts working for them and you can start getting paid by the hour, this can be a pretty good arrangement. Plenty of people have websites that will always be evolving and never "done", and this is fine. In those situations, you and the other person can agree on a fair and reasonable per-hour rate, and then they know whenever they ask for a new feature, they will have to pay for it.

Plenty of good advice in this thread - I don't think you'll have any trouble finding someone to build a site for, but having done some of this myself years ago I would say that probably the most important thing you can do as a favor to yourself is to try and limit scope while managing expectations. That is to say, when you first meet with the person for whom you'll be building a site (or, if building a site for an organization, the person in charge of the project), try an establish some ground rules about the stages of the project. * The first phase should be gathering requirements and coming up with an initial site map and feature specification. * During development, if the client starts throwing out ideas for completely new sections of the site, or asking "Hey, would it be possible to have a menu that flies onto the screen with an animation and spins around in 3D and plays this awesome MIDI file that I found?", gently invoke the initial spec and politely say, "That's out of our original scope; in the interest of keeping everything on track, let's get this first iteration of the site built, and then we can review changes and new feature requests." It's very tempting, especially when you don't know if X is possible but are curious yourself, to say "I think that's possible, let me look into it." That's always my first instinct; because I'm curious myself, and I want to make the client happy... but it's also important to keep your role in the project in perspective. Even if you're just starting out, you still know more about this web stuff than the client; that's why they chose you to build a site for them. If you push back politely but firmly on big change requests, most of the time the client will respect that. It's been my experience that a lot of volunteer/non-profit organizations understandably tend to push to get the most out of their resources, so you do have to be vigilant. With a client who's always pushing the boundaries, a site that started out as a simple project can turn into a death-by-a-thousand-cuts scenario where the thing never gets finished because they keep asking you to tweak things or add new stuff. I've been building web sites for 13-14 years and I still have to watch out for this. The problem is that people see how quickly some changes can be made to a page or design, and get the notion that any change should be that simple.

What we used to do was to find local businesses with really bad websites and we would just go ahead and redesign them. Not looking to hustle anybody or use it as a sales pitch, but it was just an easier way to find project websites to work on where the content was mostly already provided. It gives you the chance to be fully creative, but with a purpose. And if you are so inclined after, you can show it to the original owner to see if they have any interest in purchasing it. But that was never our original intent, just turned out to be a bonus on a few occasions. it was a great way to build up a portfolio without having to dream up ideas out of thin air.

This is turning into something of a hobby-horse with me, but I just want to point out that you don't want to design a website, you want to develop a website. Well, in fact you probably want to do both. I've got a little project for which the HTML and the back-end coding is very much my area, and I don't feel I need help with that. But it could very much do with a graphic, visual makeover. So when I saw you saying you wanted to do design, I thought I'd get in contact. But reading further, I saw that you actually wanted to do the HTML/CSS/JS/back end, so my project wouldn't be of use to you. I join with everyone else in wishing you good luck of course! Just wanted to point out a language issue.

Thank you very much, everyone, for the advice, offers, and well-wishing. I've been contacted by a lot of people with proposals, so I'll start there.

I'd bet that there are far, far more people who have ideas for websites than there are people willing to build them for free. I think a Craigslist ad is a good idea, but consider positioning it so that you're the one vetting the ideas other people have, and choosing one in which to invest your time. In the ad, you could include: --An offer to sign a nondisclosure agreement, so that people feel comfortable revealing their ideas to you. Someone here recently posted a non-binding one for use between friends that, modified to be a little less edgy (you'll see what I mean if you find it), could be sufficient for your purposes. I can't find it, but maybe someone will come along who can. --An explanation that you'll work for free or minimal cost, but track your hours, and if the website ever makes a profit, you get x% until you've been compensated for your time (at a nice, fat rate that reflects that you didn't get paid until later, and never had assurance you'd be paid at all). --An honest statement of your skill level, and that the reason you're doing this is to develop your abilities, as you've explained here. --Some caveats that keep you in control if you decide you're done with a project or you don't want to do all the parts the person with the idea has in mind. I bet you'd get a lot of people applying to have you develop their idea. You'd have to sift through a lot of dreck to find one that would be a great portfolio piece, and maybe even eventually turn a profit. P.S., I'm one of the people who thinks they have ideas that might be profitable if made real. MeMail me if you want to hear about them and consider whether to take one of them on!

When I started doing web design in the '90s, I was terrible at it. Luckily, my first client's sites were even worse than what I was capable of, so they hired me and I improved things. So keep looking for sites that are currently below your skill level. Another approach is to create a web presence for a small business you like that doesn't currently have one. Or one for your town that lists local businesses, services, etc., if it doesn't already have one (some kind of nice niche project that you can gradually improve is good to have).

http://ask.metafilter.com/97156/Help-me-set-myself-up seems somewhat related.

I second what gchucky was getting at about practicing redesigns for current sites. The more you learn about current web design and coding practices, the more you'll cringe whenever you see most sites on Geocities, Tripod, etc. Find a site that looks like it was put on the web 5 years ago, and create your own design, incorporating current standards. I had almost no acutal experience building web sites for public usuage. I was approached by a local ballet company that needed a very small site and now have something decent to show future small business clients. Once you get more experience, check out http://www.elance.com to get freelance design/coding jobs.