As a web developer of over 7 years, I have had my share of trying all kinds of scripting languages, prepackaged scripts and tools to make the job easier for me and the client. Over time, I have been sticking with the same regiment of preferred solutions and am quite efficient at them.
All of the web based projects I work on follow a strict series of guidelines to ensure that the websites render properly on all internet browsers, are accessible to elderly and disabled visitors, and most importantly, completely accessible to all search engines.
If you are unfamiliar with the term "Open Source", it's ok. The Open Source Initiative is something that has been around for about 9 years, but hasn't really started gaining attention from the business community until recently.
In essence, Open Source technology is the act of developing something such as a piece of software or web based application, and allowing it to be downloaded for free and altered to fit the end-user's needs. The end user can alter it any way they see fit and in some cases redistribute it, as long as the original author allows it. Open Source works are most commonly licensed under LGPL and GPL licensing structures.
On the surface this may sound like a horrible business model, however what makes it so incredibly successful is the community that gets built around the software itself. Usually the developer of the software or application will offer a public bulletin board for users, volunteer developers, and supporters to come together for discussion to ultimately plot out a course for improving the product to it's fullest potential. Users benefit the most from this since they will have free tech support & non-existent product fees.
Where ever you host your website, it's either going to be on a computer running Windows, a variety of Linux or a variety of BSD. The later 2 are free operating systems, offer strong security and again have a huge community of support behind it. Logically, many web hosting companies will choose these 2 over Windows primarily due to overhead cost.
Things to consider when choosing your web hosting is disk space, monthly bandwidth allowance, and support for 3rd party add-ons such as databases, programming languages and pre-configured scripts for use with your website.
Hypertext Preprocessor (aka PHP) is an Open Source scripting language used by web application developers to create a feature or series of features on your website which are dynamic in nature. For example, a PHP script could show the date somewhere on your site, and it will automatically update itself to reflect the new date, everyday. This scripting language is very robust and quite flexible to work in conjunction with other scripting languages as well.
I personally prefer PHP as my programming language of choice due to it's reliability, adaptable security features when connected to online forms, and of course the huge community behind it. PHP can be supported on any kind of hosting environment if setup to do so. Also, placing a PHP script with an already HTML coded website will not deprecate the existing page in any way. To the naked eye, visitors wouldn't even be able to tell where the script is being used.
MySQL is an Open Source database platform which is fast and extremely reliable. Any kind of dynamic programming language can be used to interact with it in any way the web developer sees fit however, PHP is the most commonly used with MySQL.
I've used Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Access, and even tried my hand at Oracle for a web based database solution, and was ultimately won over by MySQL after trying it one time.
The obvious bottom line to getting a web developer is staying within your budget and meeting your expectations. Play it safe, request examples of their work, be very clear what your expectations are and make sure they keep you informed about everything they are doing for you. Don't be afraid to draw up a time-line and expect them to stick to it.
Ultimately, you have the option of going with hundreds, if not thousands of web developers locally here in Hawaii. Each of us have our strengths and weaknesses, and many of us have similarities between us in terms of capabilities and mastered techniques.
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