Which Server Side Language should i use?

[John_Fine]

Hi all, I am new to web development. I am starting off to build a website that have have a lot of information that people can search and look up. My friend suggests me to use J2EE as such:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For web dev, the easiest and cheapest solution is to build the web using- Server side scripting: JSP or XSLT (needed xalan for the XSL transformer, it's free)- Server programming: Java (will be easier to maintain in long term if your Java code conformed to the J2EE architecture, but harder to build the initial framework, not conform to J2EE will be much easier in the beginning but harder to maintain later) - Server: Liferay (free, 100% compiled with J2EE, 5 mins configuration needed) or you can use Tomcat server - Database: Postgres (free, all features fulling functional) and other solution is to use PHP for the server side scripting and directly connect to the Postgres database, very fast to develop in the beginning, but could be very hard to maintain later. You can use Apache server, and installed the PHP scripting engine to the Apache, also very easly to configure. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But as we hv read in the internet, i think probably it may be easier for me to use something like ASP and SQL. I read through the J2EE tutorial and find it is so complicated and my website is just a simple web clients focused website. the only dynamic feature is a search. So what do you guys think? I have knowledge in VBScript programming but not the others. I do not mind to pick up any of them in order to complete my website. So what will be the easiest way for me?

[aspnetguy]

J2EE is complicated compared to ASP or PHP...it has to be compiled and uses OOP.I would suggest ASP or PHP, not much difference between the 2 except PHP can be run on Linux (if you use Windows then it does not matter).I would recommend ASP just because I know it better and to use Access for simple, small websites and MySql for more complex, larger websites.I have not tried it yet but you can download the Express edition of SQL Server 2005 for free and use ASP to connect to that.

[John_Fine]

J2EE is complicated compared to ASP or PHP...it has to be compiled and uses OOP.I would suggest ASP or PHP, not much difference between the 2 except PHP can be run on Linux (if you use Windows then it does not matter).I would recommend ASP just because I know it better and to use Access for simple, small websites and MySql for more complex, larger websites.I have not tried it yet but you can download the Express edition of SQL Server 2005 for free and use ASP to connect to that.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Many thanks for your reply. So do u use vbscript or c# for ASP programming?

[pulpfiction]

Hi John, As you have knowledge in VBScript using ASP will be easier, with a little bit of Javascript (somtimes) you can build a pretty tidy site.

[aspnetguy]

I use VBScript for ASP programming and C# for ASP.Net programming.ASP does not use C#.