PHP or ASP?

Hi everyone, I am fairly new to programming and need help on choosing a language. The website would be about species profile, a basic fact sheet with probably a picture. I have been looking at colfusion, asp.net 3.5, php, and jsp.

Asp seems to be the best wysiwyg thing with visual studio, I also like the template system, or the master page like in power point. I think the programming is suppose to be similar to C programming isn't it? It is normally used with ms SQL server.
A lot of people seem to recommend php, most forums seem to run on this language. I know It’s often used with MYSQL and there is a ton of help with it. php sounds like it can do everything jsp can plus more.

So I really don't know about which language to use, the database will probably be no bigger than 1gb?, I have no preferance with the sql server, and security would not need to be so strict since the site will be mostly public. I do plan on adding a sub domain with a forum and with its own database.
I am not concerned with pricing at all right now, so comments and experiences would be very helpful!

 

I'm afraid you are going to get biased opinions like mine - PHP. I prefer language that has more information and examples available on net to speed up my coding process.

 

Hmm, Im expecting that. Im begining to lean towards asp, I had phpbb installed once and customizing it was very hard because of the template system. IMO, it is very messy.

 

I prefer PHP too... it's so much more versatile, and in my opinion, linux web servers are better... and you've also got to think customising a pre built system is always messy if you're not used to it...

 

95% will say PHP, because PHP is better than ASP.

 

ok, is php faster?

I think I will decide on php! as my first languege at least.
Is asp better in any way?