I need to put a multiple choice quiz on a website. I need to be able to have visitors to the website choose their answers and then have the website calculate their results. Would php be the best option for this, or would another programming language be better? Since the only languages I am familiar with are html and BASIC from the Commodore 64/Apple IIc era, I will have to learn whatever language I use for the quiz, so I would appreciate any insight I can get from people who have experience with other languages.

I have Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours, copyright 2004, but the first thing it tells you to do is go to www.php.net and download php- but the url given in the book no longer goes to the indicated webpage. Can someone tell me what I must get to use php? I have never downloaded anything to run php, but the php that is in some webpages I have on my harddrive seems to work OK anyway.

Learn php , it will do what you need with the quiz and after you learn it you will be able to do almost anything.

All i needed to download was wamp which has php on it and a text editor, then you can start learning php.

Yeah PHP will do its easy.

One site worth reading is tizag.
Google tizag and do their PHP tutorial.

Once done, you will be able to do what you want.
( Wont take long )

<?php

if ($_GET['answer1']=="Blue Whale")
{
$count+=1;
}
echo "Your score is $count";
?>

Yes it will be easy to do it PHP. My favourite site is www.w3schools.com for PHP help. You can download the PHP server off of php.net or just go to www.godaddy.com and get a shared hosting plan for about $6 a month. Or if you are doing this through the university then get access to their server. Then you just upload the file to test it.