I'm in the early stages of planning a web site and need some help on how to best develop this site. To describe the site in a brief manner you can think of it as an online diary. (That description is not exactly accurate but the site would be similar in structure and functionality.)

From the description above I therefore need database functionality. The users would basically log in every day, and make entries to the database. This is not like a community site, so there would be no interaction among the users. (At least not in this first development.) Further on I would need some chart functionality, at least column, line and pie charts, which would be based on the user information in the database. (Some kind of dynamic chart solution.)

The first advice I could need is some help on choosing the right programming language/package for this kind of project. My main concern is speed. I want this site to be really quick for the user to use. Also user-friendliness and a nice clean design is important, so I'd prefer that the chart functionality could produce some very nice looking charts in 3d etc.

I've fiddled around with many different languages in my time, but little in the last couple of years. Of course .Net/SQL Server comes to mind, as well as PHP/MySQL, and I'm sure there are lots of other options. The problem is I'm outdated, and if anyone could give me some advice on which solution I'd be better off, I would be very grateful!

TwinCepto