Its perfectly possible for a "newbie". We were all there once!
Have a look at
http://www.viart.com/rookie_installation.html
The important part is to check with the phpinfo file that the server is capable of running ViArt - does it have Zend etc - before doing anything else.
I do recommend the "localhost" method to start with as it will give you confidence and you can easily see the way the server/program structure works as well as make mistakes without them being public
