Guitar suggestions and tricks of the trade

Buy a slide and turn up the distortion. Its awesome.

I also use Ultimate-Guitar for their tabs and chords. They do have a lot of great videos to help you along. Youtube can be hit or miss by helping you with a song you are working on.

I've tried learning on an acoustic. My problem is somewhat shorter fingers so that I have a hard time reaching the proper placement for chords. Any suggestions, or am I just not doing something correctly?

911tabs.com is actually a search of all chords and tabs sites (that I've herd of at least.)

I'm by no means an expert, but since I have figured out a useful amount of chords, I like to take a favorite song and just pick out the chords for myself. I don't worry if I end up in a different key than the song was written. Doing this gives you a good ear for when to change from one chord to another. Also, get a book, chart, or website with a ton of chords. If I am having problems with a particular change, or it just doesn't sound right to me (even if it is right), I find it fun to find an alternate chord to play in the same key. Often I find this adds an additional bit of complexity and can be quite pleasing, as well as the fact that it allows me to make my own arrangements, so it doesn't just feel like I am just doing a karaoke version of a song.