Here is my understanding :
The Webpack dev server starts a small Express server for you which serves all the static assets. So, you don't have to configure anything extra to serve those home.html, page1.html files. Just put them in root and it should work.
To run the server on a different port do this : webpack-dev-server --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000
Webpack supports hot module replacement and hot reloading. I guess if you run the dev server with --hot flag it'll watch for file changes and do a hot reload. e.g. webpack-dev-server --port 8000 --hot.
I don't understand the 4th point. Can you elaborate and explain what exactly you are trying to do here?
Hope this helps.