Knossos

That’s always a danger.

You could host the server on its own vlan and use tailscale to tunnel from a VPS to your server. This way your IP isn’t exposed to the public. You can also add crowdsec or similar on the VPS.

I do the same thing with traefik on my dirt cheap VPS.

You could try wormhole. It makes a direct connection.

This is the way.

Check out Immich Kiosk as an example for image frames.

Also Cloudflare adds a caching layer, often physically closer to users. Increasing speed of delivery and reducing server costs. It’s a no-brainer for server admins.

Also, I don’t work for Cloudflare either. The animosity is new to me, and certainly something I’ll look into.