I make use of the most current tools available, and I use these to create the most appropriate site, at a reasonable price. Among my favorites:
Java, according to some industry estimates, is the most popular programming language in the world. When it was introduced by Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com or java.sun.com), it was hailed as a system where a programmer could write a program once, and run it on any system that had Java on it. Java now runs quite nicely on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems, and it has become a very mature program.
Java is at its best on a webserver, where it performs very well on data intensive functions. My best experience with it so far is in building www.yukonbooks.com, where Java Server Pages (JSP) were used extensively. These pages were used to pull data from the database where I store information on the books we sell.
Microsoft's answer to Java is their .NET strategy. Heavily promoted even in mainstream media, .NET definitely provides a simpler, easier, more consistant, and theoretically more secure platform that previous Microsoft architectures have.
This is a particularly useful architecture for desktop applications, and can be quite useful for large-scale web projects as well.
mySQL is an "open source" database that is rapidly becoming one of the most used pieces of software on the Internet.
While it lacks some features that can be found in proprietary databases from Microsoft, IBM, or Oracle, mySQL has great performance, no serious security issues, and best of all, it's FREE! It's also very robust, and is well up to the task of running a business.
The downside is that installing and configuring this beast is not for the faint of heart.