It really depends on what you want to do, and/or what the scope of the project is. If it's a self-hosted blog, I would personally think that a WAR would be hug

It really depends on what you want to do, and/or what the scope of the project is. If it's a self-hosted blog, I would personally think that a WAR would be hugely overkill (ignoring that Java might be overkill altogether anyway). If it's for a project that you intend to sell to Enterprises though, a drop-in WAR is a huge benefit. If you're planning to build the front-end with a lot of JS or Backbone-style interaction, you'll want an API anyway, so you might go with the last method of developing REST endpoints and just accessing them via JSON and Backbone. (This is the approach I'm taking on my most recently project, though Python is the backend, not Java). Without knowing the scope of the project, whether there are customers, what kind of customers they are, etc., it's a little hard to make an informed decision, however one thing I didn't see was Play[1]. The last Java project I had was done in Play and I found it pretty easy to get up to speed on, and it's designed to act as a web framework. If you're looking for something new to learn, or an easy way to transition from systems development to web work, Play might be a fun transition for you. [1] - http://www.playframework.org/ http://www.playframework.org/