What's a good platform for building an average e-commerce site i.e. what lang./DBMS do you recommend and why?
I have an idea for an e-commerce site, I don’t yet know how great the demand will be. I have good experience in ASP + SQL Server 2000, but wouldn’t mind trying out a newer, possibly more efficient scripting language such as PHP or Ruby. What would you recommend and for what reasons?
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If I had to do that, I would stick with Microsoft platform but go a little further in technology
I would choose ASP.NET with C# as my programming language and SQL Server 2005 (even 2000 will do if its a small website).
Reasons are pretty simple. With asp.net 2.0, its very very easy to create scalable and secure web applications.
PHP and MySQL. You won’t be tied to visual studio, it’s platform-independent, and both are free. I work in a .Net environment, and even being a Mac guy I like some things about it. But really, it’s best to be tied to something that can’t get away from you. Not to mention that it’s open source and a very efficient language (PHP).
Ruby is very up-and-coming, but if you already know how to program, I don’t see the benefit. I’ve heard that Ruby is slower than other translated languages like PHP, although I’ve never employed it myself.