Each time I’ve read into self-hosting it often sounds like opening stuff up to the internet adds a bunch of complexity and potential headaches, but I’m not sure how much of it is practicality vs being excessively cautious.

Do you run it as a mostly isolated/self-contained instance, i.e. not federated/connected to others? I’ve read here & there that for some it seems to bog down as they try to operate it as a federated instance.

The limitations are severe however and I would never suggest to anyone to use IRC as a text chat server.

I’m a little confused, if all you wanted from it was text chat, isn’t that pretty much exactly what it is as a result of its limitations? Regardless, for the majority of folks I think you’re probably right that it may not be advisable given its limits.

https://esc.sh/projects/devops-from-scratch/ is a good resource. Most questions you have (that are more specific) are easily searchable on the internet.

Thanks, however while there are some rough notes in the Github link, it looks like this is primarily a series of videos? I was asking for text resources as I prefer those for a variety of reasons, and in this specific case it’s because it’s much easier to copy over any referenced scripts and clearly read commands mentioned.