I would recommend Node.js Though that alone doesn't say much. I recommend first of all you write the code in coffee-script and not in javascript. Node is bare

I would recommend Node.js Though that alone doesn't say much. I recommend first of all you write the code in coffee-script and not in javascript. Node is bare-bones and the choice of template languages and what not is left up to you. I recommend stylus for css, and jade for html templates. For databases I recommend MongoDB (or some other nosql type database). There's a Node module called 'mongoose'; it seems decent but I haven't used it so can't say much. MongoDB uses flexible documents (json objects) instead of sql-type tables, and allows you to add/remove fields dynamically to individual objects ("records") without having to redefine a "schema". So at least in theory it should make migrations a lot easier. Why do I recommend Node instead of Django or Rails? Simple: I think it's the future. Node.js is very lite, has an awesome package manager, lively vibrant community, solves the concurrency problem beautifully, it's evolving rapidly, but more importantly: it makes simple things simple. Ever saw a comparison of a "hello world" in Java vs. Python? Java requires you to do a lot of setup upfront, where as python just lets you say: print "hello" Well, Node is kinda like that. Creating a project in Django and/or Rails requires a lot of boilerplate. Where as in NodeJS it's a single .js file with about 5 lines of code. And sure, Django/Rails have tools to automate the creation of this boilerplate, but it's still a clutter to your environment. (For the record: there is a lite framework for python called Flask, but it lacks all the other benefits of Node)