Administering a web and mailing list server at home...

[Jim]

All - 

Thank you for your replies with much appreciated encouragement, information,
and suggestions!

Kevin Kinsey wrote:

I might proffer the opinion that in contrast to the statement 
"seems to me I would lose a lot of control and have software tool choice
limitations..."
that it might very well be the opposite case.  As administrator of the
server,
*you* choose what software will be installed, not someone else.  Unless you
are talking about proprietary software, it's out there; many hosting
services use freely available "Open Source" code for almost every purpose
there is.

Dave Vollenweider wrote:

As an alternative, you could look into a commercial web hosting company that
uses FreeBSD and puts every site in its own jail.  You'd then have a root
password for the jail and can do whatever you want with it without affecting
the rest of the system.

As a result of these two comments, I looked into the possibility of a vps
host. This does seem to solve problems I have with my current provider
explicitly stating that operating a web server through their connection
violates my user agreement.  

I am also investigating the alternative choices I have been given for my MTA
and mailing list manager software.

Thank you all again!

Jim