One option that is getting a lot of attention right now is the Rails framework. Nice, clean OO language, simple MVC architecture. Start by watching the 10 minute demo ([link|http://media.nextangle.com/rails/rails_setup.mov|http://media.nextang...s/rails_setup.mov]) where David creates a blog from scratch in just 10 minutes (no ... really). If that looks interesting, checkout:

* Main web site: [link|http://www.rubyonrails.org/|http://www.rubyonrails.org/]
* IRC: irc://irc.freenode.org/rubyonrails
* Sites created with Rails:
** [link|http://tadalist.com/|http://tadalist.com/]
** [link|http://43things.com/|http://43things.com/]
** [link|http://www.snowdevil.ca/|http://www.snowdevil.ca/]
** [link|http://onestepback.org:3030/project/list|http://onestepback.org:3030/project/list] (my one and only public Rails project).

Seriously, the project you describe sounds only a bit more complicated than the example given in the 10 minute video.