Not a problem when self-hosting on own hardware. Especially in winter. Overly complicated spaceheater goes brrrr

Hard to say without knowing which method you used to install HomeAssistant.

But I never found mdns .local addresses to be very reliable. They work 80-90% of the time, but the remaining 10-20% are a hassle.

Instead I’d recommend you install PiHole (in a docker container is easiest). PiHole is a DNS server intended for network-level ad-blocking. But it also have a handy feature of defining local DNS entries, so you can have HomeAssistant.myhome or HomeAssistant.whatever (.local should not be used with PiHole local DNS because .local is meant for mdns)

The biggest problem with Discord is that its an information black hole. Its not properly searchable and not indexed by search engines.

Discord is fine for casual chat, but horrible when used for forum-type discussions and even worse when used for documentation.

You see the same problems being discussed and solved again and again, but you cant just “link” someone the solution like you could with a forum thread cause its spread out over 3-10 chat messages that are interleaved in-between other topics being discussed in the same room

Anything of long-term value for the project (forum-type discussions, documentation etc) should not recide in Discord