techniques for learning the fretboard?

do you guys have any techniques on memorizing where each note is? any patterns or such? my method has just been going up and down each string and saying the note out loud as i play it - i've definitely gotten better, but i feel like it's taking forever

Rome wasnt built in one day.
What i did was learn the lower half (up to 12th fret) and then just transposed it using the european time system.

For example, high e string 8th fret is a C.
I know that 8pm is 20h in europe, so the 20th fret on high e string is a C aswell.
This helps me by only having to learn half the board and yet i know the whole thing. Also, learning scales down the frets (as opposed to board).
Knowing where the octave of a note is relative to a given note (think power chords),etc...
It takes time but in the end it's worth it. I hope my little shortcut helped you.

Lol bdave, I've never thought of it that way.
I just figure 12 plus whatever is the octave.
The best way to learn the fretboard is scales, tons of scales.
There are some pretty basic patterns for scales, and if you know theory, you know what notes are in each scale, and you can take those patterns and move them up and down the fretboard.

it's funny b/c i've been meaning to learn scales, but thought i'd need to know the fretboard first

Learning and perfecting scales is probably one of the best things you can do to improve A LOT of things on guitar.

it's funny b/c i've been meaning to learn scales, but thought i'd need to know the fretboard first

Yes. It goes like this:
-Learn the fretboard by heart...you can use simple tricks like the one i showed you.
-Learn music theory

=

You'll know scales without having to "learn" them. It's also better in the long run.

all of this of course is moot if you use a non-standard tuning such as open c major. which is what i'm trying to learn :-(

How I recommend my students do it is using 4 facts.

The 1st fact is the first 3 dots of the neck (3,5,7) spell GAB like someone gab's a lot. On the dots they go by the musical alphabet actually. G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A that is 3,5,7 on the top 3 strings.

The 2nd fact is the octave trick. If you skip a fret and skip a string you have the same note until you reach the 2nd string and you must skip 2 frets. This comes to skip 1 fret skip 1 string from 6th to 4th. skip 1 fret skip 1 string from 5th to 3rd. skip 2 fret skip 1 string from 4th to 2nd. skip 2 fret skip 1 string from 3rd to 1st.

The 3rd trick is the tuning notes(which most people know already). On the 5th fret of the 6th string its the same as the open note 5th string. 5th string 5th fret is the same as the open 4th. 4th string 5th fret is the same as the open 3rd. 3rd string 4th fret is the same as the open 2nd. and then back to 5th fret 2nd string and thats the same as the 1st.

The final trick is the 12th fret repeat. The 12th fret is always the same note as the open note on that string. so the 12th fret is the same as the open that means the 13rh fret is the same as the 1st fret, the 14th fret is the same as the 2nd fret and the 15th fret(DOT) is the same as the 3rd fret(DOT) so looking at the dots the whole neck has started over and all these tricks will carry downward and begin again.

Surprisingly that was a lot of typing for something that takes like 5 minutes tops to explain to a student and most are floored how easy it is to find the notes using this method.