How to gain experience? [closed]

Question

This is a problem that I think many people will find very common and some guidance from the expert users around here will be appreciated.

Background

Basically I'm a junior web developer in a team of 6 (all juniors too). 6 months ago our team leader and project manager left the company. Currently we are being managed by a non technical person.

The new manager chose me to act as a technical leader for the rest of the team till the company hires a someone more experienced.

Problem

Although I'm a good developer my experience in providing solution to the company's needs is somewhat lacking. I mean I have no problem implementing solutions or adding new modules to the system as I have been working for 2 years already in PHP and MySql.

The problem is when we are designing a new heavy feature or building a critical module that can't tolerate trial and error.

Check this link for a design issue that I recently had to implement: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10529459/building-a-cron-job-scheduler

I can easily build all solutions that were mentioned in the post. The only problem is that I don't have enough experience to choose one of them. My ex-Team leader used to make the hard decisions and I really used to learn a lot from him. However, now he's gone and I'm left out all alone.

Solution

Now There is 2 solutions that I figured would be best for me:

1. Leave the company ASAP :D and find a better company that can provide me with good experience and increase my knowledge (Although I can't leave the company any time soon due to various reasons).
2. Find books, references or any available materials for large scale projects or pro web developers techniques. Basically anything beyond simple applications. This is the only option I have right now.

Notes:

I am not looking for resources to learn PHP, MySql, frameworks, ORMs or design patterns. I want knowledge transfer from experienced programmers.