Just a curiosity, but is this web page/site going to be internal or external (intranet vs. internet)?
If you plan on making it available only to the internal network, then you are under no real pressure to get it all secured from the beginning and you can easily take your time in learning all the ins and outs to doing this without putting your private network in danger.
If you are planning on making this an Internet server, you have some serious security issues to consider.
Since I do not know your intentions and the suggestions for a publicly accessible server can be lengthy, I will simply await input from you on what you intend to do.
Knowing that will also help us point you to what you might run into when setting up something like this.
Either way, I would suggest you go with an RPM based distribution such are Red Hat or Fedora. I have found it very easy to keep up with and fairly simple to learn.
One word of caution on Fedora Core is that they seem to be rather pro-active on the update front. This is both good and bad. Good because it keep you up on the latest-and-greatest of most everything. Bad simply because the latest-and-greatest is not always the most stable and battle-hardened.
Learning to use both up2date and yum effectively will solve these issues for you in the long run. Even my wife is learning to love her new FC4 x86_64 box and she has never used anything but M$ prior to this. {she has nothing to do with the administration of it, nor did she ever understand the administration of M$}
Of course, asking Linux folks what they suggest for a distro and why is almost as dangerous as asking for religious or political preferences and reasons :-)
These are simply my thoughts and opinions.
"I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." Stephen Krebbet, 1793-1855
