The latter

We like the reddit-adjacent function in lemmy compared to a standard bbs.

Sorry I thought I had that included. We’re primarily in the US. Very rarely we see users from the UK though.

My bad, corrected

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If I’m not mistaken to make your instance available to other people you’d have to set up a reverse proxy. And a correctly set up reverse proxy shouldn’t reveal your IP, only the local IP (127.0.0.1).

Thank you for this information, if this is correct it sounds like this isn’t something I need to worry about then.

Is there any documentation you could link me to that would go into greater detail about how I can do that?

Alright, thank you for your help!

Alternatively you can run your own VPN with a VPS (and use it like a reverse proxy), then you can easily control the port forwarding.

This latter part, please forgive me as this is the first time I’m looking into hosting a web service. My plan was to purchase a domain with Google, which would include WHOIS privacy. Is this what you’re referring to here?

Thanks a bunch for this! This actually does well enough to answer all of my questions in a way that will allow me to get started! Very much appreciated.