Bruce, I personally prefer Access and ASP because I have been an Access/VB developer since the early 90s, and both Access and ASP are based heavily on VISUAL BASIC and Access also has the benefit of being a great solution for desktop and small-LAN databases too.

PHP/MySQL are also very popular. PHP is based heavily on the C/C++ programming language (which I used to program in YEARS ago, but haven't done much with since the early 90s). PHP/MySQL is a FREE solution, since both are open source and don't cost you a dime. If you have any C++ experience, then PHP might be the way for you to go. There are many sites using PHP.

Personally, I like ASP. With the new ASP.NET extensions (which I have yet to cover in my classes) there is a whole lot of power and potential for your web sites. I wouldn't use an ACCESS database for a LARGE site, because there are some security and performance issues, however you can use Access to design your site and get it up and running, and then when your traffic starts to get heavy, it's REAL easy to upgrade to a professional-level database, such as SQL Server, Oracle, or YES, even MySQL.

The back-end database doesn't really matter. They all work about the same. The FRONT-END (language) is where you'll be spending your time. And for me, it's ASP because of my familiarity with Visual Basic... but you can do pretty much the same "stuff" with PHP.