Socket and XMLSocket help!

hi, i am starting a project for our church that it will look like a game, each logged in users will be able to attend different types of the room such as prayer room, visitors room etc and will be able to interact each other.

with having a just brief rough idea, i figured that i need to have a socket server and socket class for it. (i tried to make a chatting room with just urlvariable and php mysql but it seems its more appropriate to use the socket server.

well the site will be more focused on the CONNECTION between the logged users and they will need to be able to interact each other when they are viewing photos, videos, sharing thoughts, prayers, etc, and for that matter socket server seems must.

but i do not have any knowledge on the server socket, how to make em and how to set up them. can someone please give me a insight or direction where i should start and look for ?

i figured php isnt suitable for a socket server(which is the only language that i know of) so i m lookin into java or python but i have no idea what to do.

any help will be appriciated thank you.