I think that server is overkill for you. If you would like to learn webdev, you can simply use your PC. But it is up to you, having dedicated development machine has its advantages.
But regarding selfhost, you are now would like to see solutions and you can find your problems for them. This is not a good approach, this is not how the world should work, in my opinon. First find problems, then find solutions for them.
So as advice, just start learning webdev and try to host your stuff (even for yourself only as practice). As you do it, you will meet with a lot of problem then, you can finf solutions for your problem. What kind of problems? Few example:
At some point you may thing that you want your own repository (git server) to host.
Or you don’t want to remember port numbers just use subdomains, you need a proxy.
You need databases, how to backup and restore them?
Database query seems slow so you want to use some distributed cache?
Needs running multiple instances? Need proxy, load balancer, and so on
But these things are solutions for something that you do not have yet, problems. It is not sure that you need all of the things from list and you probably will need others. So just do something on your machine, you will find your problems, then you can find solutions.
I think that server is overkill for you. If you would like to learn webdev, you can simply use your PC. But it is up to you, having dedicated development machine has its advantages.
But regarding selfhost, you are now would like to see solutions and you can find your problems for them. This is not a good approach, this is not how the world should work, in my opinon. First find problems, then find solutions for them.
So as advice, just start learning webdev and try to host your stuff (even for yourself only as practice). As you do it, you will meet with a lot of problem then, you can finf solutions for your problem. What kind of problems? Few example:
But these things are solutions for something that you do not have yet, problems. It is not sure that you need all of the things from list and you probably will need others. So just do something on your machine, you will find your problems, then you can find solutions.