I am building a R&D website, where I run a lot of proprietary software that I don't want to install on a webserver. My plan is to setup a master on my local machine hooked to a standard broadband connection and set the MYSQL on the website at some colocation center as a slave to the master. Does this sound like a good idea?
If your connection is down then the website is down.
If you switch master and slave then at least site will be constantly available. If replication delay and out-of-date data is not an issue then this solution is fine.