PHP, ASP, JSP

PHP enjoys a lot of popularity because it is designed to run on Apache/unix/Linux i.e. free. Windows for most of their existence has targeted the corporate market thus most of their good stuff has not been free. However for the same reason their stuff has had to be very secure and on top of that all the "I hate Microsoft" idiots have made it their life's work to hack Microsoft products. End result is that MS has taken great strides in making their product secure. Note almost all large corporations like Halliburton and most banks and others run on MS.

Since the release of the .net framework MS has started making major moves toward the web server market. You will notice many hosting companies now offering IIS as a hosting option. ASP.net is aimed at this market and frankly it employees many security features that Linux/Apache doesn't, especially MSSQL. MSSQL is extremely secure mostly because it integrates into the Windows Server security structure and allows things like Stored Procedures which completely separate the functions from the web interface.

I'm currently using Wordpress but that is because of lack of familiarity with the various web protocols that WP handles automatically and that I would have to setup and configure by hand if I were building stuff with ASP. I have built a few thing with ASP/MSSQL and believe me it is scary secure if you have the backend in place to take advantage of things like clustering and such. Even at that, most everything that uses the .net functions on IIS uses a machine/system account like "Network Services" to run so it's very unlikely it's going to get hacked. In fact in the last several years most hacks against MS systems have been denial of service attacks simply because actually getting into the system isn't easy.

Short version; if you're just getting started in IM and if in fact IM is your goal PHP is probably your best bet. On the other hand if you are looking to work for the corporate market using things like intranet/ extranet architectures then by all means go for ASP. BTW ASP also means learning another programming language like C# or VB.net

The reason for PHPs wide spread popularity can be summed up in one word...


FREE

WRONG
Open source does not equate to secure. In fact if it equates to anything it would be less secure because the core OS is open source meaning available to anyone for their tweaking / hacking enjoyment. Proprietary systems such as Microsoft simply because they are not open source are going to be more secure Another reason systems like Microsoft are more secure is because Microsoft has massive treasure troves of money to buy and pay the absolute best programmers in the world today. It's a simple concept really. Follow the money. This same principal can be applied just by looking at Microsoft's customers. The business world runs on Windows. When the richest companies in the world choose Windows over Unix for their network infrastructure you can rest assured their people have done their homework. The last company I worked for had one Unix machine solely to support an old legacy software that handled their inventory. While I was there we put in a new Windows network that spanned 7 different cities and more than 1000 employees. The system cost the company over $100,000 just in servers and Cisco routers and fiber connections not to mention setting up and configuring all the Windows servers and phone systems that ran on a Windows subsystem. I'm pretty sure the last big hacks that have been done were against Linux Redhat systems. Don't think so ??? have a look at

Top Security Hacks of 2011 | Software Testing Blog