Data gathering application

I'm about to start a project that involves gathering data (share prices, etc) from several websites on a reoccurring basis (every 5 minutes), storing it in a database (probably mySQL), and then use that data to generate my own web pages. I have limited programming experience of PHP and Visual Basic. I would like to be able to control all aspects of this operation from the Internet, such as, stopping and starting the data gathering process, etc. I know that PHP is capable of doing the above but is it the best solution? For example, can you have PHP process(es) running on the server that can receive stop and start requests, run between certain times only, etc? Or isn't PHP intended to perform these type of operations? It sounds like I'm attempting to develop a server application? Can PHP do this? Thanks in advance James