Abstract: Web site development and hosting evolved over the past decade. The different technologies, languages, development and production tools have made it difficult for CIO’s and system administrators to choose the right website development and hosting environment. Questions such as: which operating system is the best to be used? What webserver to use? What is the best programming language? And what is the optima database platform to adopt? This study shall answer these questions by introducing the LAMP platform as the optimal free open source solution used by many online businesses, websites and applications.