(I have been programming for long enough, I am completely language-agnostic.) PHP will give you the most flexibility in terms of platforms and availability of

(I have been programming for long enough, I am completely language-agnostic.) PHP will give you the most flexibility in terms of platforms and availability of developers. PHP will allow you to host your site with a shared hosting service, a VPS, whatever you like, with a minimal amount of hassle, because it's supported everywhere. ASP is a popular choice, too, but that generally ties you to the Microsoft platform, which can be much more expensive (and, IMO, less reliable). Java is also a popular choice; I can't think of any serious downsides other than it's not as widely-used as PHP. Many developers are migrating to Python and Ruby because they prefer those languages, or the frameworks associated with them. PHP is an ad-hoc design and that bothers a lot of developers. But, PHP still pretty much rules the backend for dynamic sites, as far as I know.