For 4 years, I ran a small web host specializing in genealogy, with PC servers I ran at home (Win2000, Apache, PHP, MySQL).
My little bit of advice is to be very careful about the type of load your servers will experience. Basically what I found is that I could deliver even the most complex and media-rich HTML sites with good speed, but when multiple users run multiple database-driven PHP scripts, forget it.
I realized there's no way I could afford the necessary server hardware, and even 3rd party web hosts would be prohibitively expensive for the kind of power needed.
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For 4 years, I ran a small web host specializing in genealogy, with PC servers I ran at home (Win2000, Apache, PHP, MySQL). My little bit of advice is to be very careful about the type of load your servers will experience. Basically what I found is that I could deliver even the most complex and media-rich HTML sites with good speed, but when multiple users run multiple database-driven PHP scripts, forget it. I realized there's no way I could afford the necessary server hardware, and even 3rd party web hosts would be prohibitively expensive for the kind of power needed.