I use the very same tools dixon uses. The material produced with them are of exceptional quality since the group PHP/MySQL/Apache look to be made on for the other. For example, you could run a BBS just like Emuforums locally on your computer (except that it is commercial, but vBulletin has also a lite edition).
Also, talking about this, the three products are realeased under GPL/GNU, so that means they're free. You can produce really professional sites with these free and amazing tools.
PHP is far better than ASP. You can configure PHP to run on almost any HTTPD web server available. On the other hand, ASP requires Microsoft's Web Servers (PWS or IIS) in order to run. And PHP has been being developed in such a way that now we have PHP-GTK, in which you can even creat GUI based web applications!!
MySQL does a great job as a free database. It has many, many features you won't even imagine to make use of. It's fast, reliable and secure! If you also prefer, you can download the ODBC version as well for integration with Delphi and other languages!
Apache, for me, is the best web server ever!! It's not only a matter of preference, but also strong quality!
Everything is free (under the rules of GPL/GNU, of course)!
People have posted already, but here goes the links again:
PHP.net
Apache Foundation
MySQL Database Engine
With these you can learn everything!!
