Basically, for a website I'm playing with, I would love to craft a back-end admin controlled panel where I can click buttons that will fire events on a front-end facing page for clients. I am running an apache server and coding exclusively in PHP/JavaScript.
I've been reading about long-polling and it seems to be the best route from what I've read, but I have no experience in this. Also, the fact that I'm running apache seems to be a problem from what I've read here. I have complete access to the server (VPS), so I could technically install node.js to set up long-polling, but I also have no experience with this.
What would be the best route for me to take for my given situation? Long-polling? Comet-based? A technology I've completely missed?
Any example links would greatly help as well.