The Arduino platform should be perfect for throwing together a lightweight webserver because of the availability of quality shields that take care of the hardware for you. As [Ovidiu Predescu] found, ...

[Stewart] tipped us about his very nice project: pokewithastick. It is an Arduino compatible board (hardware, not footprint) based on the ATMEGA1284P which can be programmed to collect and post data ...

"Below are a couple of sketches for Arduino Ethernet: the first can be used to share sensor data with Pachube and grab remote sensor data, so you can effectively have both "local" and "remote" sensors ...