Web Development

Hello,
After a bit of basic advice please. What web development languages are available and what are the advantages of each? If this is too basic a question, can someone please signpost so i may research this.

I ask as I have a couple of websites that i need to develop but new to programming and i dont want to make a basic mistake when i contract the work out.

One website is essentially a shop where people can buy things, where i can add my own stock/invoice/count stock/search items etc.

The second website is more complicated - a recruitment website for day to day work with invoicing features etc.

Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Maqsood

PHP for today. Javascript for today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
IMO, of course.

PHP is for the server side logic. Javascript is generally used for browser side logic in web applications. Javascript will not (and should not) replace PHP on the server side now or in the future.

It's already replacing. Just look at node.js and a boom of js webframeworks: javascript modules.
And well... I'm personally going to write my next intranet application with node.js.

Not in my opinion or the opinion of most web application developers. Most all server side application logic is in PHP (or PERL or ASP) or other server side language.

Here is a quote from Tools of the Trade: Web Development Frameworks that the Pros Use :

You might find a few developers here or there who are so into JS that they develop server side logic with JS; but most people do not develop server side logic in JS; but instead, use JS for browser side applications (the same as our The UNIX and Linux Forums - Learn UNIX and Linux from Experts site).

The answer to the original post is not whether one language should be preferred over another, but which development framework suits the requirements best. For the first, you could look into magento or zencart, also check Wikipedia (Comparison of shopping cart software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
You could benefit from this resource as well: Compare Content Management Systems - cmsmatrix.org - The Content Management Comparison Tool
Ultimately, you will probably use a combination of PHP and Javascript.

Most websites are built with PHP on the server side and JS as the browser side logic which is delivered by a PHP engine.

.. and since LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) is by far the largest platform for delivering web applications, it should be obvious to anyone who develops web applications or administers a web site that PHP is the server side language of choice.

Check out CNN, the NYTimes, Wikipedia, etc etc. Most are written with at type of WordPress framework developed with PHP as the server side language and JS as the browser side language.

Also, my replies are not about "what language is best" .. I am discussing what is used the most across the Internet, and the biggest server/hosting side for for web application development is PHP based.

Go download WordPress (for example)... it is in PHP (server side) and JS (browser side), because this is the standard used by the largest communities on the web. Ditto for forums (written mostly in PHP for the back end).