Debian :: How To Setup A Server

I work for a small business that is in need of a web host change, because we're apparently getting too big for our current web host. Being the IT tech for the small business, it's up to me to get this website of ours moved to something that can host us with no trouble. After doing research and listening to other local small businesses with similar problems, we've decided to settle with Amazon's EC2 service. Since their "instances" will almost act like virtual private servers with our own choice of OS, and offering a pay what you use service with seemingly no limits, it fits our demands quite well. But, before we just go sign up and try to get this working, I need to first try and figure out how this is done. Truth be told, I have never once set up my own server, so this is mostly completely foreign to me, though I am willing to learn whatever it takes to get this done.

How exactly does this involve Debian, you ask? I'll explain. Before I took over as the IT tech, the previous guy (who left and moved away to earn his PhD) helped me learn a little bit of stuff before he left. He did so by having the business buy the necessary pieces to build a computer from scratch, and installed Debian as the OS. I learned enough Debian to do simple things like use the terminal, setting up crontab and other innocuous little things. It wasn't until after he had left that we found out that our current web host is finding our website getting too big for them to handle. As I still remain in contact with the previous guy in between his work on his PhD, he agreed with our choice on using Amazon EC2 as our host, but also suggested before starting up with them, to attempt to see if I can get the website to work on this Debian machine, and to mimic the same procedure on the Amazon instance once we sign up to make the change as quick as possible.

The problem with this stems back to what I said earlier, in that I have no idea how to set up a web server, and my knowledge with Debian is quite limited. I have no idea how to set up our website (which I have downloaded everything for it already) on this machine so I can see if it works, and then replicate the work on the Amazon instance (to which I would choose Debian as the OS). I figured there must be guides somewhere to help an idiot like myself in doing this, but I've had little luck in finding anything of the sort. The best I have found was installing LAMP and ensuring Apache, PHP and MySQL (the languages our website uses) and have followed that, but beyond that I have no further idea. Other guides I have found really only teach how to install other languages and packages that our website doesn't use. Which is why I'm here.