[countessa]

A LAMP stack will be easier to deploy simply because pretty much any cheap hosting you get as a playground will support it out of the box. Rails is a little more tricky to deploy. That said, Ruby and Rails is, in my opinion, more fun than an equivalent in PHP (pure opinion though so don't let that colour your experience).

I would suggest taking one bite at a time - find the easiest deployment possible for your chosen stack (if it's rails, then deploy some test projects to heroku). Learn to program a little before trying to jump in and do the Apache setup etc. Nothing is more frustrating than wanting to see your creation on-line but you just keep hitting your head against a brick wall because you can't deploy. I'll also put in a good word for webfaction for good cheap hosting that supports rails, django, and php very nicely without you having to do a lot of server admin - perfect for a playground.

[mion]

I second that, if you're new to Rails you should definitely check out deployment with Heroku, they made an awesome job making it really smooth and they have great documentation on how to do it. Michael Hartl covers this exceptionally well on this section of his book: http://ruby.railstutorial.org/ruby-on-rails-tutorial-book#se...

[BenWhit]

Definitely a smooth install and setup for Heroku. Michael Hartl's tutorial is great. I've actually been going through it today!

[BenWhit]

I definitely am enjoying Heroku's free-tier to test and practice on. And I have gone through a good bit of Michael Hartl's tutorial, at least enough to get up and running. I do like being able see my end result immediately with little setup..for now at least. I'll be sure to check out Webfaction. Thanks!