I would suggest using AngularJs instead, since it can be purely client-side code, you don't need to deal with anything server-side.

There are also some nice online development environments like codenvy that can provide a pretty rich environment and I belieave have some collaburative features too (instead of using dropbox, doodle and slideshare, maybe).

If all those technologies seem intimidating, some strategies:

• Focus on a subset, i.e. only html and css
• Use Anki a lot - I've used anki to put in git commands, AngularJS concepts and CSS tricks so that even if I wasn't actively working on a project using those, they'd stay at the back of my mind.