Immich is so good. I love it

Off the shelf something like and EdgerouterX is great,

You could consider running Crowdsec as well on yr firewall that way known bots will be blocked

I love it

I love it, it’s so nice for quickly jumping between apps

Immich without a doubt

Works great with PIA, highly recommend

I run Dietpi on 3 PIs, one is a remote backup that is wireguarded into my network and my server runs BorgBackup to it

Do what you can to make this the place you want to be.

Nah it was lame, some people had good strategy but it came down to crappy challenges and crappy people