So! After a lot of messing about (learning my way around how a web server works under the hood) and trial and error I finally bit the bullet and “begged” @sprouts87 for a hand.
A few shots in the dark later and I now have the Attendize web server up and running.
I am running the system on a ESXi VM using Ubuntu Server 20.04 Server.
For anyone interested, below are the steps to get it up and running. . . Feel free to comment on my process if there is room for improvement. 
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install apache2
sudo systemctl stop apache2.service
sudo systemctl start apache2.service
sudo systemctl enable apache2.service
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-client
sudo systemctl stop mariadb.service
sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service
sudo mysql_secure_installation
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt install php7.4 libapache2-mod-php7.4 php7.4-common php7.4-curl php7.4-intl php7.4-mbstring php7.4-xmlrpc php7.4-mysql php7.4-gd php7.4-pgsql php7.4-xml php7.4-cli php7.4-zip php7.4-bcmath
sudo nano /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini
memory_limit = 256M
upload_max_filesize = 100M
max_execution_time = 360
date.timezone = Australia/Adelaide
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service
sudo apt install unzip
sudo apt install curl git
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | sudo php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/Attendize/Attendize/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
sudo mv Attendize-master /var/www/attendize
cd /var/www/attendize
sudo cp .env.example .env
sudo composer update
sudo composer install
sudo php artisan key:generate
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/attendize/
chmod -R 755 /var/www/attendize/
chown -R www-data storage/app
chown -R www-data storage/framework
chown -R www-data storage/logs
chown -R www-data storage/cache
chown -R www-data bootstrap/cache
chown -R www-data .env
chmod -R a+w storage/app
chmod -R a+w storage/framework
chmod -R a+w storage/logs
chmod -R a+w storage/cache
chmod -R a+w bootstrap/cache
chmod -R a+w .env
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/attendize.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/attendize
ServerName hydeconsultants.com
<Directory /var/www/attendize/>
Options FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
sudo a2ensite attendize.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service
sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
sudo rm /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
sudo reboot
Thanks to everyone above who threw in their 2c for this one.
One more little piece of food for thought on a project like this. There is still a cost involved in the back end for accecpting credit card payments online, with the costs of secure VPS, domain, hosting etc it comes close to the cost of using a preexisting service such as Eventbrite.
