No problem! If you don't mind spending some money, the Berklee college of music actually has most of their theory textbooks available on amazon and they're all less than twenty bucks a piece. If you bought the first and second books, you would have a permanent physical resource of basically all the foundational theory knowledge taught at your typical college course.

What's important is to follow a structure. Usually music theory is taught in a specific order because certain rules and ideas to not make sense until you understand a few seemingly unrelated points first.

The main components of music theory are Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony.

You should start out with Rhythm, which makes up beat (the tempo of the song), meter (the length of each measure), and duration (length of notes and rests). Percussion exercises are the best place to teach yourself rhythm. Once you understand the different meters (4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 2/4, etc.) you can also start to pick out the beat of a song. A good way to help wrap your mind around how they feel is to find a song in 3/4, then a song in 6/8. Each measure will have about the same length and often can contain similar notes, but they'll feel different. 3/4 feels like it has three distinct pulses: 1 2 3, 2 2 3, 3 2 3, 4 2 3. 6/8 feels like it has two distinct pulses: 123 123, 223 223. That level of detail doesn't really matter that much if you're dance music (which is basically all in 4/4), but it can give you some ideas for interesting rhythmic patterns to lay into your track.

From there, move onto Melody: the pitch of a note. This is where taking the time to understand sheet music can prove useful, in my opinion. This is where you learn the names of the notes, accidentals, and the the parallel scales (major and the three minor scales). If you don't already have one, think about investing in a MIDI keyboard so you can start to learn how to play C Major and A Natural Minor. If you can learn those two scales, you can just transpose and instantly have a major or minor melody in every single scale.

Bridging between Melody and Harmony is when you should really start learning about intervals - the distance between two notes. Start doing interval ear training (musictheory.net has a great one) and start seeing if you can transcribe melodies that you hear from songs you like by intervals alone.

Harmony is chords. Learn about all the different chords, about chord progressions, about voicing your chords and messing with inversions, and start going down the rabbit hole.

Like Lydian said, a lot of the more advanced stuff beyond basic Harmony is going to need more dedicated schooling. It can't hurt to look for a tutor on craigslist, just so you have someone to bounce your questions and concerns off of! The big benefit of schooling for theory is that you have someone to steer you away from false conclusions and some of the tricky bits about music like F flat and B Sharp. If you can at least get up to chord progressions, you have enough knowledge of theory to make about 95% of dance music. Be sure to take your time, ask lots of questions, and don't get discouraged.

Learn how to finish a song. Learn how to develop a workflow. Learn how to be a songwriter before you learn how to be an engineer.

Many people say they feel limited when they would be familiar with music theory.

On a related note, something that I found very interesting is how there are even established Hollywood composers who reject the "constraints" of music theory.  One of my music professors told a story about either Danny Elfman or Randy Newman purposefully refusing to use traditional theory way because he felt that it inhibited his creativity.

However, when someone who was working under him referenced a certain scale or mode, the composer scolded them because they're supposed to refer to it as the "cartoon" scale. So it's not that he doesn't know music theory, it's that he does not embrace music theory.

Awesome, may I ask what you named your different tabs?

Well, most of the tabs have their names right there for you to see, but they've changed a bit since I last posted them so I'll give a general rundown of my personal organization structure really quickly:

I have the "General Tips" folder as the first thing I see, which is where most of my quick-entry pages go (things that come to mind during walks or at the gym, ideas for DJ transitions, and other stuff that I'm probably entering on my phone without paying too much attention to grammar. Then I have a few section group pages: Notes, Work, and Miscellaneous.

Notes are where I ended up putting all of those masterclass sessions and methodology videos, divided up into sections based on what they're from: EDMProd.com tutorials, Ill Gates methodology workshop, youtube video notes, and my own personal notes from reading various manuals.

Work is where anything involved in music production goes - liner notes for songs, ideas for new tracks, organization for EPs and whatnot, and anything that is meant primarily as a personal reference and idea platform.

Misc is just anything that doesn't get thrown into the other two sections - my ideas for practice regiments, for example.

Looping things with Ableton's sampler is a nice classic (but I suppose not super unique). Lately I've been experimenting with using Serum's wavetable synthesizer and applying an envelope to the wavetable position - you can use bend modes and the various comb filters to get some crazy sounds!

I go with Splice! 8 bucks a month, 100 samples or 33 presets a month (or any combination thereof). Don't have to buy sample packs or preset packs, just go find the sound you want, preview it, and buy it!

This is actually my first music production forum, before this I was going it all solo! Though I've been hanging out on internet forums and stuff since the early AOL days back in like 2000-2001.