Can I use Bonita BPM to create a web application for internet users?

Keep searching...

No, what I mean is "is there any right (perfect) tool" for what you are asking - no there's not. Would Bonita work for you, possibly.

Your brief is so wide it can only be answered with a Yes/No answer. Why well it depends on what you want from it.

There are many many web front ends out there that could be used...Bonita, Joomla, Drupal, Dokuwiki, Mootle, SugarCRM and Wordpress to name but a few...

You really need to outline what you want to do, how it will work and then decide on the appropriate tool for your needs. Bonita might fit the bill, I would suggest also talking to one of the sales guys to get a better feeling for what you want to do. Or give us more detail here... :)

To answer your specifics though:

I am trying to find the right tool to create a web application for users on the internet to run...

OK, but what is it you want to do with it? What is your design brief?

I don't want to have to learn to use MS Visual Studio, SQL Server, etc.....also,

OK, but are you happy learning Java, CSS, AngularJS, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, MySQL etc. You will have to learn something. And the database side of things is necessary if you are doing production work. Web...How many users? 10s, 100s, 1,000s, 10,000s? How big is it going to be?

Do users have to utilize the portal or can a user simply type-in the URL, login, and start using the workflows I built?

No they don't have to use the portal, you can build your own front end using whatever technology you like. REST is the way to provide this functionality.

Basically, I don't want my web application to look like a bpm portal but rather have it look like facebook, or some other web application.

The New UI designer allows you to be more, much more, flexible with your design of UI. So it need not look like a BPM portal. You are limited to your imagination in this case, and the widgets, but you can create your own custom widgets (a lot of people build libraries of these).

For your situation you would probably want to build the Application screens first and then link them to the background processes...

I hope you appreciate your question is actually very hard to answer simply as it really does depend on what you want to do. Get Bonitasoft to give you a call and discuss with them if you have any questions about suitability.

Best regards
Seán

PS: If this reply answers your question, please mark a resolved.