running a website the Debian way

[Peter Michaux <petermichaux@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I've had some small hobby-type websites running on a Debian VPS for a
several years. My sysadmin approach has been very amateur and ad hoc.
It has worked fine because I have not depended on these sites for
anything. I'd like to learn how to install and maintain a website in a
more professional way. If there is such a thing, I'd like to know what
"the Debian way" would be.

The website in question could be something like

 * an Apache virtual host configuration file
 * a PostgreSQL database with a few users with various permissions
 * some static web content: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images
 * a few Perl CGI scripts

What I'm thinking is that I'd like to be have some .deb packages that
I can install on a brand new Debian VPS. These packages would create
database users, database, and tables as necessary. These packages
would configure and restart Apache to use the new configuration files.
I would be trying to avoid type anything other than commands to
install packages. Perferably one package that installs all other
packages.

Any pointers to good resources that describe doing all of this for a
website the most Debian way possible?

Does this even seem like a reasonable objective?

Thanks,
Peter