Is it Premature for Me to Think in Terms of Hosting my "Toy" Webserver?

During the lockdown, I have started building a “toy” Webserver on my Windows 10 laptop, using Node and Express. It is not much past “Hello World” but I can access my pages from browsers with localhost URL’s.

I know my laptop’s IP address. It is connected to an ISP. I tried to access my site from my IPhone but it didn’t work. I know that the IP address is correct–I can access my site from a browser on my laptop using that IP address and the server’s port number (of 3000).

I would love to host my page somewhere and access it from my laptop, just to see how this is done. I don’t expect any outside users to access my site for the next several months, possibly forever. So, this will be just for testing purposes.

One of the options is to get the cheapest account from Digital Ocean.

1. Is there a free trial period?

2. If not, am I committing myself to a certain period of time?

3. Can I move my project to a droplet without going through git/Github?

4. What exactly do I get in my droplet? Can I get Windows 10 so that I can start my server there (just I do it locally)?

5. Will I get an IP address for accessing my server?

6. Is this all premature? Should I wait till my server is better fleshed out?

7. My server might eventually be a place to serve my memoir. Something like WordPress will be the ideal choice. However, I am a retired programmer and Web development in itself is of interest to me. So, I have two conflicting goals: (a) Improve my Web skills (b) Get my message out to the world (so to speak).

Thanks.