Well, curiously enough, I've been looking at doing something similar recently. Biggest reason is that my friend asked me to make him a web site for a web comic he's been designing. He intends to put it up on some free web space somewhere, which kinda hinders what I can do with it. Right now, it's basically a python script that spits out a bunch of html files, and keeps track of things in an xml database. It'd be neat if I could do it with something like rails.

My only real difficulty was the fact that decently powered machines are a bit out of my price range. I've been looking at various UML hosts, as they seem to have decent prices.

I have free web space and mail service from a friend as it is, but he's doing it for free and I'm always a bit loathe to ask him for more. Things like installing fcgi and ruby/rails, etc, or doing more than just forwarding my mail.

Looks like we're in the same boat.