I suspected there might be a bit of skepticism about this here. My suspicions have been confirmed!

Regarding the Calibre web server part, if you happen to already be running a web server with PHP wherever your calibre library is, there is an old PHP front end called COPS ("Caliibre OPDS (and html) php server") which still works and I still use, and find better for my uses than Calibre's web server. It provides a web interface, OPDS interface, and a built in web based epub viewer.

I do happen to already run a web server for other things, so this is more convenient for me than seperately keeping calibre's web server running all the time. But even more importantly, I like using the calibre command line tool (calibredb), and if you run the calibre web server, the command line tool doesn't work (because calibre locks the database).

Works for me anyhow.