Hosting from home really isn't a good idea. You will run into numerous problems.

If you are really serious about this, i would recommend you do the following things:

1. Upgrade your DSL to at least 8Mbps, if not replace it with T1 / T3
   
2. Think of investing in a small UPS so that you have clean power provided to the pc. (They usually retail here for about £30 - £40).
   
3. Get a PC which does not munch power otherwise you will see a 4 digit figure on your power bill!
   
4. Cooling - lots of fans or air con in the room you are going to house it in (its going to get very hot if left on 24/7.
   
5. OS - a stable platform like CentOS would probably do the trick. Install Apache, FTP, MySQL etc and your pretty much home and dry.

All in all it would probably be better paying a small amount a month for a professional company to host your site for you. They will do all the hard work and all you need to do is make sure your sites updated.

If the site isnt too important I recommend going for a $1.99 - $3.99/Month plan and paying $9 or so per year for a domain. If it is important then you will need to do it right and it will cost a lot more then a few $ a month.

Think about power costs as well. Running that system 24 hours for 30 days a month will add to the cost of running it. If you don't know a lot about server management or Linux you are bound to run into problems.

With hosting companies offering servers for as little as $69 USD a month why would you trouble yourself?

Unless your home server will need to do A LOT of processor intensive number crunching stuff (it almost certainly won't!) that Athlon 3000 is way overkill considering the bandwidth bottleneck you are working with.

Best use an old laptop or build a Eden / Pico / Mini ITX system that only draws ~20w under load.

As for distro, I assume you can't afford MS Server 2003 but still want something simple. Ubuntu Server Edition is a v.quick way to get an Apache/SQL server running, it's easy to use (for linux) and quite secure out of the box.

r0g

I never received the email notifyig me of their changing plans.
In any event they upgraded me from professional to Corporate and I didnt need it.

I only discovered this when I went to print off a statement forthe last year and noticed the increase.

The nice people at Visa have agreed to give me back the money I have been overcharged, and I'm now looking for a new hosting company.

I've been with myhosting for 7 years, the service was always more important that the price. If they had simply mailed me and told me that prices had to rise I would have just swallowed it.

Changing my hosting plan without my consent when I didn't need it smacks of sharp practice.

I have been exchanging emails with a robot, not much use to anyone.