am i an idiot: selfhosting a Signal Proxy and/or a Tor Relay

does anyone here have experience hosting a Signal proxy and/or a Tor relay? there's a blog post on signal.org asking for folks to help, and i can but i don't know enough about network security to feel safe/confident doing some of this stuff. same with Tor - i've always wanted to host an exit relay (and in fact have this whole long theory about how every public library in the US should host an exit relay, but that's for another post someday maybe).

do any of you have experience with doing this? what kind of best practices would you recommend? any good resources on protecting your network that you might point me to? i will be getting my Net+ cert within the next year but for now i am starting from "enthusiastic beginner" and want to be helpful, but careful.