i have done a lot of work on similar things, but not exactly as you describe your project.
i would be more than happy to help you learn in this forum, but i have no time to devote to anymore projects. i consider php my strongest language, although i really like java and c# too.
http://ocsclan.com/ is a community i run which uses vbulletin for the forums, however i've created a management system for the rest of the site which includes downloads, all the site info, player ranks, etc. i have scheduled jobs that run in the morning to sync our game server with the web site as far as individual stats. i 'borrowed' the hotmail look for the back-end, and here is some screen shots of it:
i've also dabbled with amx plugins for counter-strike.
http://mystatus.ocsclan.com/ is a plugin i wrote which writes player status' to mysql, .. then there is a php web interface to display the data. it is complete with a web installer and back-end interface to setup the site info and look. this was written over a year ago, so i'd probably not be too proud if a re-looked over the code.
at work i have developed web apps to track product support calls and customers with php/mysql. currently i'm porting it over to jsp interfacing with our db2 database which resides on our as/400. that's my day job, on the side i have my own business too. primarily building and maintaining database driven sites/apps.
it's all similar though, web technologies i mean. just html forms sending data to a script that talks to a database. php/mysql is by far the most elegant for me to work with for web design though.
there's quite a few people who know php very well here, so if this is what you decide to start on, .. don't hold back any questions .. maybe i'll get some ideas for more tutorials.