I really should have said this in my post, but if you have a question relating to the post, please post it as a comment there for future viewers and feeds for the article itself.

But I didn't say that, so in my opinion the easiest (and also free) way to set up an Ubuntu Apache server is a
Proxmox VE with an
Ubuntu Turnkey with Apache. I personally use the LAPP appliance, because I use PostgreSQL. You could also install the core and install Apache yourself (not too bad). Lastly, if you'd prefer an OpenVZ solution,
Turnkey Linux has an integrated solution for Proxmox. Mind you, setting up a server does have a learning curve, but it can be climbed.

If further questions could be posted as comments on the article itself, I'd appreciate it. But hopefully that will get most people going.