Got it working!
I provisioned a new server and went for the Digital Ocean ubuntu LAMP configuration. To get it to work though, I then had to "apt-get install php5-sqlite" (after apt-get upgrade and update, then apt-get -F install after the first attempt to install php5-sqlite failed) and i also had to "chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www" in order to make the DB writable. (i had tried all of this on the Debian setup but to no avail!)

I'm looking forward to trying it out. I've got a test rig with a little GPU setup so far, but I'm halfway through building a proper one which may be finished tonight.

obviously i also had to open up the port on my home router.

Thanks very much!