I'm still not sure if you'll find someone that will guid you through creating an engine 1:1, because some people get paid to teach such stuff and the task isn't even near trivial (it can take years to create a complete engine)...
I guess you'd be better off by reading some books on that topic. Also google can reveal you so much knowledge (e.g.
this).
For a start you have to think about what an engine is, what its purpose is, which elements it should contain, etc. In combination with that you can think about how your engine will be organized (e.g. you could create an engine using the
MVC design pattern). After that you have to think about how you'll map your idea onto C++ and OpenGL, what are the limitations, how should the interfaces look like. This step requires good knowledge in C++ and OpenGL, so you'll have to temper with them beforehand.
And only after planing it out carefully you can start coding. For this part I'd suggest to use
TDD with reasonable refractoring steps.
This is the way I'd probably go...
Ill try to join the irc, since i've never joined one, and see what i can get out of it.
You should really get used to it, since it's the best and fastes source to get questions answered (e.g. you can post on a forum and if you're lucky someone will answer, but his answer is completly wrong and it can take you another day for an another answer. On IRC in the right channels you get instantly help and most of the time directly with the right solution and the follow up questions can be adress very fast too.)
i recently found a tutorial\guide (call it how ever u want) on how to build an advanced particles engine for various effects (blood, explosions, im sure u know), and im thinking of following it so i can get a bit of opengl
I don't really see how this should relate much to your game engine, since a partical engine is something compeltly diffrent...