Hi.

I generally make web sites using a LAMP or LEMP stack. For my busy sites I have manually made multiple web server Linodes. I have heard about Docker. Could anyone point me in the direction of what I would need to make a private cloud with this kind of stack, and perhaps one that can automatically scale, using Linode or other providers?

Docker is a pretty big topic all on its own. I recommend checking out some of our articles on it here - https://www.linode.com/docs/applications/containers/

Search online for some more resources and documentation on teaching the fundamentals about it too, it's a pretty neat way to build your infrastructure.