Lighttpd is basically a light-weight version of Apache. I find it very useful for development as I don't have the wasted resources being used on Apache when there's just a handful of people actually using it.
You will need the following packages,
sudo apt-get install lighttpd php5-cgi
Next you'll need to enable the fastcgi module and restart the lighttpd daemon.
sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi
sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload
Now you can symlink the www directory to a Web directory in your home folder. This will make it easier for a single developer to manage the files, but don't use this in a production environment.
Warning: Be very careful to type this command correctly.
sudo rm -R /var/www
sudo ln -s /home/$USERNAME/Web /var/www
And you should be set.