[OScubed]

Only thing I'd add is that ASP is very old technology. ASP.NET is the current version and should be used for anything newly designed - and it's inherently more secure than ASP. You can get a free version of Visual Studio at Microsoft's site, and student pricing on the full set of tools is quite reasonable: http://www.microsoft.com/express/. I'd also mention that .NET programmers are very in demand in the industry so learning .NET is a good move from a career point of view. They even have a free robotics studio available that uses dot net.

On the build vs buy side I'd recommend looking into a content management platform for your website. There are a number of free open source ones including DotNetNuke, and Joomla. Be sure that you can get the hosting resources you need to run any platform you want - but you can buy a whole lot (like strong login security, etc.) by starting from a content management platform.

Disclaimer: My company is a Microsoft Gold Certified ISV so we are heavily Microsoft oriented here.

Good luck
Lee Drake
CEO, OS-Cubed, inc.