What Methodology Should I Use?

I'm setting up a site that needs a certain amount of server-side includes. One such feature that I am trying to implement but have no idea how to go about doing it...is listed below:

Ever seen a page(for example, something to do with games) that has the ability to hold a certain count for a user, symbolizing perhaps money? I would really be interested in learning how to accomplish this, but I am not quite sure to which medium I should use...CGI, etc?

I am in the process of learning the coding langauges. If anyone could offer me any help, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you for your time.

ok im HIGHLY biased but i recommend php...its by far my favorite language and is a snap to get the basics down so you can be up and coding quickly....not as much syntax to wade through as with other languages (perl, asp, etc)...other than php i say perl (asp and java suck in my opinion)......to track visitor stats and such to display while they are on your site you can use sessions in php and once you understand the concept of them implementing them is a snap!!

I'm a Perl developer and I can even see the advantages of PHP over Perl for WEB-DEVELOPMENT. It's faster, more lightweight, and it has more built in functionality. I'm with chris.tns on ASP but I've never used Java for web-programming so I don't know.

ASP is a microsoft thing, and just like other microsoft things it only performs at its best with other microsoft things. It's pretty much crap.

Hope that helps.