I am going to strongly urge you to consider changing that order and move *security* to the first priority. I have long run my own servers, it is much easier to setup a server with strong security foundation, than to clean up afterwards.
As a beginner, you should stick to a well known and documented Linux server distribution such as Ubuntu Server LTS or Fedora. Only install the programs you need. Do not install a windowing system on it. Do everything for the server from the command line.
Here are a few blog posts I have bookmarked over the years that I think are geared to beginners:
"My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers": An quick walk through of how to do basic server security manually [1]. There was a good Hacker News discussion about this article, most of the response suggests using tools to automate these types of security tasks [2], however the short tutorial will teach you a great deal, and automation mostly only makes sense when you are deploying a number of similar servers. I definitely take a more manual hands-on approach to managing my personal servers compared to the ones I professionally deploy.
"How To Secure A Linux Server": An evolving how-to guide for securing a Linux server that, hopefully, also teaches you a little about security and why it matters. [3]
Both Linode[4] and Digital Ocean[5] have created good sets of Tutorials and documentation that are generally trustworthy and kept up-to-date
Good luck and have fun
[1]: https://sollove.com/2013/03/03/my-first-5-minutes-on-a-serve...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5316093
[3]: https://github.com/imthenachoman/How-To-Secure-A-Linux-Serve...