Web Based Map application development

I am trying to develop a web based map 开发者_如何学Pythonapplication where the user can interact with the map. But I am new to this field and do not have much idea about how to approach this. Basically I want to use a static map created by me, so I think google map API s may not be used in this case. My development platform is unix. Can you please suggest what language I should use to write the server and also what kind of free tools can be used to implement the map part? Thanx...

I suggest reading up on the Google Maps API 3. You can add overlays or even add your own tiles using the API. Specifically, I suggest looking into the GroundLayers section of the V3 API here GroundOverlays