Help with new site - programming

[cstickman]

I have been given a task from a local invenstor and he wants a site like eharmony, chemistry and so fourth. My question is that I know php/mysql from the ecommerce side and was wondering how do they program their websites? I am confused about how they have their own email service. Where you can email a user / and when you log into your account you can view the email and respond back to it. I am not sure if php is the best way to go and if I have to learn a new language. So if anyone has any insights on how they do it and what is the next language I should go with would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[sohguanh]

I am not sure if php is the best way to go and if I have to learn a new language. So if anyone has any insights on how they do it and what is the next language I should go with would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

There are quite a lot of combination so for some I know is below.

PHP using Apache Web Server
Mod Perl using Apache Web Server
Java+JSP using Apache Tomcat
.NET using M$ IIS
PLSQL using Oracle Web Server
etc etc etc

Generally to lower the development licensing cost, PHP, Perl and Java are my picks but of course there could be others I am not aware of like say Python ? Ruby ? ColdFusion ? cgi-bin using C, C++ etc etc

So to advise you is pretty difficult but since you have learnt PHP I think it is good enough for you to use it for your server-side programming language.