Ruby on Rails ... is GREAT. It is fun. It is the best way to write a web application. Get it here now! Ruby is a pure object oriented programming language that uses meta-programming (use programs to write programs)

Ruby on Rails (RoR) is a web framework built on Ruby that uses a modified version of the Model-View-Controller design pattern which every good programmer must know and use for User-Interfaced based applications - like a website and a game.

It includes a web server but you can also run it on Apache and IIS with some changes. I think it is not necessary to do that until you want to deploy.

If you use Windows and want to try RoR:

1. Download the Ruby for Windows Installer.
2. When you have installed it, start the command prompt and type: gem install rails --include-dependencies
3. To use MySQL with RoR, download the MySQL/Ruby driver instead of using the built in gem -install (assuming you already have MySQL server installed).

If you want a PHP framework that is based on the design of RoR check out Code Igniter. But seriously, you should take a look of RoR.

The Wikipedia article on RoR is a good introduction.

Check out BaseCamp and CampFire, which is done by 37 Signals - a pioneer in the concept of web 2.0 and AJAX.  ¶ 6:14 AM