I wouldn't go down the route of hosting a few static pages, because before you know it you'll end up with a huge mountain of pages to go through when you switch over.
You might as well set up something like Moodle, and it's free too, so I agree with what everyone says above. I think Sharepoint might have a slightly bigger learning curve, though, and isn't necessarily designed specifically for VLE use (though it can do that), but it is pretty powerful. I've seen setups where people use both Moodle and Sharepoint in conjunction (Moodle specifically for VLE use, Sharepoint for document management and various intranet pages and so on).