I stand with you for the subdomain and bare metal thing. There are many great applications that I'm facing trouble implementing since I don't have control over A domain settings within my setup. Setting mysite.xyz/something is trivial that I have full control over. Docker thing I can understand to some extent but I wish it was as simple as python venv kind of thing.
I'm sure people will come after me saying this or that is very easy but your post proves that I'm not alone. Maybe someone will come to the rescue of us novices too.