You’re just now installing Magento 2 on a live site? I would suggest building a staging environment and testing everything out, M2 is slow compared to M1 (and any other php framework that comes to mind) and prone to problems I wouldn’t suggest just cowboying it. www.reddit.com/r/Magento…

Some of the PHP frameworks are deep and complex, I’d suggest focusing on those - they’re written in PHP so by using them you’ll get exposure to the underpinnings. www.reddit.com/r/PHP/com…

Are people really angry over this? It’s not insulting your job, it’s saying that using _THIS_ PHP interpreter isn’t recommended, it’s going away. You can install PHP sixty different ways, they would recommend one of those. www.reddit.com/r/PHP/com…

You don’t need hosting to learn the basics, I’d consider one of the local development tools used for running it locally like warden or valet. You could also run it locally with docker, which would help you on your path to eventually hosting it online with something like digital ocean. www.reddit.com/r/Magento…

I’ve had several clients on Nexcess SIP servers, and they really aren’t that bad for M1 hosting. You’re a bit confined with what you can do yourself, but I never ran into anything unsolvable, and their guys are decent if you need help. The hosting service itself is fine for the low-end imho. Webscale is offering post-EOL support for M1, they’re probably worth considering too. www.reddit.com/r/Magento…