I am currently developing a town web site, I am doing this for free with the terms that my site is on EVERY PAGE in the footer. I am now the local authority on web development and have already secured two contracts from referrals from this work. I have been booked by the local tourism and development association to attend a speaking engagement and discuss the website development. At the engagement I will be pushing my own services and I will become the "go to" guy in my district for web development. They are also going to feature me in two articles in the local papers (free advertising) and I will be who they all refer to when they have web development questions.

*The site isn't even live or past the concept stage yet!*

Doing sites like this is a big task, and doing it for free some of you might think I am crazy. But this is a seriously calculated decision, there are 120 businesses and services locally, if 20% of them want a website and I get contracts averaging $1000, that is $30,000. I normally secure larger contracts than this too. Also because I am cultivating this "expert" persona I don't even have to sell myself, they all come to me (like the two who already have). This is seriously the easiest money I think I am ever going to make.

I don't have any answers for your second question, but I don't think it would be too difficult to create in .php