How hard is it to convert third party hosting, like register.com, godaddy, etc to private servers?

I have a-DSL at home, can I host my own site at home?

You can, but it's usually not worth it, not even cost wise. The connectivity will be rather limited, you'll have to keep the computer on 24/7 which will increase your electricity bill, you'll have to spend time managing the server, and learning how this job must be done etc.

http://www.dslwebserver.com/ could be of some help if you really want to go forward with this.

Hope you have a lot of site if you're gonna go the home hosting route!

I think that you can do that for fun. Do not try tohost there serious project. I think that is more bandwidth related issue.

Security, bandwidth, speed, and stability are 4 issues your probably going to run into.

Security is major. If your running it from your home computer (the same computer you run all of your other software, and use daily), a single web server attack can result in a lot of sensitive information being stolen.

Most ISP's have a bandwidth limit, so that may limit the amount of traffic that your going to get. If you download a few movies, games, music, and browse, this further decreases the amount of available bandwidth.

A simple DSL connection may not support too many instantaneous visitors, without considerably slowing down the downloadrate of your website.

Lastly your ISP may not support a web server running on the default port 80, or a mail server, etc.

Purchasing webspace from a thirdparty company, may prove to save you much time and headaches. However, what you're planning to do is great for education purposes, and learning about th business.