General tips

How noob are you? If you are noob enough to not creatively use/understand compression and EQ yet that is a very big wow. But that is pretty much very noob so... Also loop recording, v-vocal (for timing edits) and starting the mixing session with a dry mix to see if it's at least OK and no sounds need to be comptely chenged can feel very good once you are comfortable with the processes. Oh, and slowing down the tempo when recordin complex/hard midi parts.

Save projects you are working on often and use a sequential file naming scheme along the way.

Man there is so much stuff to learn...... at this point all I will say, is.... it's gonna take time and work. How much and how long depends on where you are now (relatively speaking) and how much time you spend honing your craft and learning new skills. It's a different road for every single person here.

The distance I've come in 2 years, might take another person 2 months, and a different person 10 years......

Spend time recording and mixing.... it will come. Ask questions.... but make them specific not a wide ranging "tell me what I need to know" ...... as you come to roadblocks, take them one at a time...learn what you need from that opportunity then progress until you hit the next one....ask more questions.... record more music...get reviews from the people in the song forum..... and so it goes..... and look back at the stuff you did a year earlier.... hopefully you will see a big improvement..... then keep learning.

I'm looking for the sorts of things that when you learned them you thought, "man, I wish I'd known about this before."

I wish I'd known that spending more money almost never results in better recordings.

Hearing what you mix
The importance of good monitoring, screw buying new vst-instruments and effects if you can't hear them correctly anyway. I think it's much easier making good sounding tunes with freeware and good monitoring than with expensive synths and crappy speakers.
    Also, if you can't afford acoustic treatment put some duvets or foam matresses on the walls to minimize reflections. Also don't move everything out of the studio, bookshelfs can act like pretty good diffusers.
    Another important thing is reference material in your mixing enviroment. No matter how much you know exactly how a song sound you don't know how it would sound in your studio if you haven't listened to it there. Get to know how different mixes translate to the enviroment where you are working and getting the sound you are after will be much easier.

Knowing what you use
It's easy to want everything you read about in magazines if you can afford it and it's easy to download every free synth out there to ad to your collection. It's harder but much more rewarding to stick to a few and actually learn how they work, once you feel you master what you use (or really need a different sound) that's when you expand your collection of tools. Instead of filling your hard drive with everything you can get your hands on (I've made that misstake) think but what you actually will be using and need for your music and get that. Now, I'm not trying to tell you to be minimalistic. Not at all. I'm just saying that most people don't need ten different linear phase EQ:s that theoretically should sound exactly the same or 35 different synths where you only use the presets when you could evolve mush more as a musician/producer if you took your time investigating and learning about your two or three favourites.

The horrors and joys of presets
OK, presets for EQ and compression when mixing is a trap. The EQ curve somebody liked on their vintage Levin acoustc may not at all fit your processed VOX-amped Les Paul even if the preset says 'Guitar Precense' and the 'Kick Drum Thump' on your compressor might actually get your perfectly fat kick from your favourite library to sound like a wimpy 'click'. On the other hand presets can be a great starting point when learning. Wanna learn how to compress a kick, bring up that preset and tweak it to see what it does. Often with compression the first thing to change in a preset can be the threshold becuse it's not very likely that your material has the exact same peak value so look at the GR meter and see what it does, if it says -18 it's probably way wrong and if it don't move well then the preset aint doing nothing.
   With synths go through your favourite presets and look att the knobs, listen what happens when you tweak or change settings, compare the settings from different sounds to each other. It's a very fun and rewarding way to evolve.

Learning the ropes by trial & error is half the fun! But I will say I wish I'd known what a big difference a good mic/preamp/compressor can make.

Most mistakes you can fix or fudge in the mix, but if your vocal track was recorded on a cheap mic, it's as good as toxic sludge and you might as well flush the song. So my advice is, before you invest $$ and time on anything else, find a good mic for your voice. Then work down the chain from there (next find a good preamp, then a compressor, then fx/mixing techniques for vocals). The most important part of today's music is the vocals, so try to get that right in the beginning.

1. tune up.
2. check tuning again, before hitting the red button.
3. practice your parts BEFORE you record.
4. play with feeling, or wait til you can.
5. everything else, is secondary.

Best advice I can think of is to keep on doing what you've already done... and that is, when you have a question, THIS is the place to find your answer.  There are some amazing folks here, many of whom have already given you some pearls.

man i don't remember that far back.  all i can say is...  monitors monitors monitors.    make sure you can hear what the problem is before trying to fix anything.  learning how to use the daw... that's just research but none of us can tell you what is good or bad.  that's what those floppy things on the side of your noggin are for. listen to every peace of music you can get your hands on(with good quality phones and train yourself to isolate all the different instruments separately.  once you do that then start listening for the fxs such as compression, gating, eq's(yes they are fx) verbs and stuff like that... then try to observe what the enineers and producers were trying to accomplish with their mixes.  pretty soon you'll be listening to mixes rather than music.  with a good set of reference monitors you'll be able to start emulating what you heard in the phones and by playing with compression and other goodies you'll start to understand the sudletees of your mix and how it all flows.  that why reference monitors should be your number one concern when starting a studio... of any kind.  they will point the way to all your shortcomings...and you wont throw your money away buying stuff you don't need just cause it's what every one else is using you'll buy stuff that you know will help you.  you will know when you've exhausted all your current resources and need to step up.... your ears wont ever lie if you train them well.  this will also help with your quest to know about your daw.  your trying to know how the story ends without reading it.  learn the craft first... then the apropriate questunes will be asked.  if you find yourself wishing there was a better way to do this or that(something that's repetetivre like muting all channels or bouncing tracks)  then you'll ask the right series of questunes.  but if you don't know how it should be then you are not at that stage and there is no point in asking the questune.

 even it it aint what you want to hear.