The most popular web server program to use (i use it, and this website uses it) is called apache. (
http://www.apache.org/)
After installing this web server you will need to open port 80 if you have a router or firewall, then browse to the apache folder and find the configuariton file which is called 'httpd.conf' in the 'conf' folder. Edit the settings in this file to setup your server.
To test that the server works type localhost into your broswer and you will get a welcome to apache webpage.
To start hosting your pages first of all you should (it's optional, but I like to do this to keep everyhting organized) create a folder for all webpages (example c:\sites\) then set that as your webpage folder in the httpd.conf file.
You can then start putting files into the folder and they will be viewable from either 'localhost/file.extension' or 'youripadress/file.extension'.
To set the default index file (the file that would run if you don't specify a file [for example, if you type
http://filesharingtalk.com it runs the file called 'index.php']) go into the httpd.conf file and edit the line that says 'DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.php' (or something along those lines, it will always start with 'DirectoryIndex').
To setup your web server to use PHP pages you will need to download PHP (
http://php.net) and install it to your computer, then add this to httpd.conf right at the bottom:
######## PHP!
LoadModule php5_module C:/www/php/php5apache2.dll
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
MySQL is another program you will need to install and configure to work with your web server.
It gets kind of difficult to get going at times to setup a web server but if you search google there are plenty of guides available for you, and once you get it working you can just save all of your configuration files for if you ever need to reinstall. :)
