If you're doing web development for money, then you should go with whatever is the most expedient solution that produces reasonably attractive results. The dan

If you're doing web development for money, then you should go with whatever is the most expedient solution that produces reasonably attractive results. The danger here of course is that in the long run what's expedient now may lead to problems down the road - such as when you hit a problem the pre-built solution can't handle, or if it causes you to do more work than you would if you only had a better understanding of the underlying technology. With that said, if you're doing this to try and learn something, then you will be doing yourself a disservice if you don't at least try to roll your own version of everything you will want to do with the web. Even if you start out with your own stuff and decide to swap in freely available components (open source, etc.), at least then you'll understand the infrastructure you're working with at a level you would otherwise not.