Carol,
I'm inclined to advise you to take the easiest route i.e. let other do the hard work and just use their tools.
If you insist on writing code then I can't really advise as to which you should use as I've only used ASP & VBScript.
Mouser has obviously done PHP which a lot of people rave about.
For PHP development I haven't got a clue - I'm sure there are free development kits out there (please tell me because I need to know) but I don't know where they are.
To develope ASP at home you'll need Windows XP Pro with IIS installed and a text editor - yes, you could use a fancy editing tool (e.g. Dreamweaver) but a text editor will get you started - I use jEdit which is a fancy freeware editor from
www.jedit.org - but there are loads of editors out there.
And if you want a content-driven site then you're going to have to opt for XML or a database ... or both - Microsoft Access will do to start with.
I suggest taking some demo code and making light changes to see the effect.
It's very gratifying seeing the results of your first script - and the beauty of database-driven (and something which people don't always understand) is that once you've written the code it will work with 2 entries or 200.
Have a play with all 4 options
- WIKI, Forum, etc
- Site Builder (your domain may have a free one)
- PHP
- ASP
and decide which works best for you.
All the best and good luck,
Nick