web site development - Visual Studio or Joomla or ???

I would like to get some advice about the best tools for small-scale, windows-based web development, i.e. not for huge companies but for small businesses. I am trying to set up a business doing this, and I don't want to spend too much of my time in setting up and solving technical issues but rather in actual development. The tools should be fairly easy to use but powerful enough to expand some applications as the the business grows. Support must be readily available, add-ons and sample complete sites, a large user community and new versions of the products constantly being developed. I don't mind paying for software and tools so I don't insist on free open-source. Perhaps some discussion on this topic is available, white papers published etc. so I would like to see them. So far I have not been able to find such a discussion or comparison. Also, I can't program in C and would much prefer VB or some variant of it or a generic language like PHP etc.