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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Yeah, you’re definitely right about that. I would still like to prevent that from happening. I’d rather it shows the general area of a place nowhere near where I’m at.

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.