best thing for Website hosting

I'm new to the whole website thing and was looking for advice. I am looking to make my own website, however there are so many places to get domains and host websites. I don't want any website builders as i will be making the site from scratch (html ,css etc...)

what hosting platforms do people recommend.

side note: how easy is it to host your own website from home, what sort of hardware might you need and is it pointless. i also wanted to know how you would set up your own domain without paying a hosting company (if i was to set up a server)

I know these questions might be long to answer, so would appreciate any links or other places that explain this.