First I'll make some assumptions about your requirement based on your post, correct me if I am wrong: a. all the potential web sites in your mind have fairly s

First I'll make some assumptions about your requirement based on your post, correct me if I am wrong: a. all the potential web sites in your mind have fairly straight forward server side operations, things like getting data into/out of databases, basic user management, etc., b. the front end web pages will have some medium to advanced level graphics/animations/interactive features, and you would like to use JS/CSS/HTML for them, c. you are going to code both front and back end all by yourself, at least for a while, d. all of the sites will not have heavy traffic, at least no for quite a long time, If these are true, then it's best to 1. choose a simple and easy to learn server side framework, so you "can hack together a site in a few hours", 2. and then so you can focus your effort on learning and practice front end technologies(JS/CSS/HTML). For 1, do yourself a favor, choose a PHP framework (Laravel/Lumen, Silex, Slim, Fat Free, etc.), don't choose python's frameworks just because you know some Python, especially do not choose Django. Definitely not rails (huge monolithic framework, plus a new language Ruby for you); For 2, start with JQuery/Bootstrap, you cannot avoid them, they are everywhere. You don't actually need the big advantages of Rails/Django (their gazillions of extensions/addons, scalability, feature sets that covers every problems under the sun from one man shop to enterprise-y projects, etc.). And next time when someone laughs at PHP, just smile, and silently remind yourself that Facebook started with PHP (and PHP is behind majority of all web sites today).