Let's Get Rusty channel has a playlist that goes over "The Book" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX9HJsJUDxA&list=PLai5B987bZ9CoVR-QEIN9foz4QCJ0H2Y8

Bogdan does a good job explaining the content for beginners.

I use RackNerd for public reverse proxies on my lab. Their New Years sales is still active, and is very affordable. Only $13/yr for 1GB RAM KVM VPS, plenty for a personal reverse proxy or VPN.

No issues with service, their support is great and responds promptly.

What version are you using? There were issues federating with v 0.18.0. I updated my instance to 0.18.0-rc.10 and that resolved the issues.

Murena and Skiff are a couple of services I don't see recommended too often. Both are open source.

According to their docs, no not fully. https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/services