Linode, apart from being a fantastic VPS host, has some great resources on setting up Linux server software: http://library.linode.com/ http://library.linode.c

Linode, apart from being a fantastic VPS host, has some great resources on setting up Linux server software: http://library.linode.com/ http://library.linode.com/ Another commenter mentioned learning to set up Linux servers, and while app hosting frameworks like Heroku and dotCloud are great, doing it the "hard way" first (it's not that hard anymore, really) will help you to understand and appreciate these types of services.