Antiochus

I've had no problems with the Discord flatpak and updates. I use a KDE variant of UBlue and the package manager prompts me to update all flatpaks when I start the computer (whenever there are updates available), which I do with one click.

For a new user, i would think that individually managing package updates is probably not a desired workflow.

Weren't the devs also supposed to be adding the ability to rebind the overview to just the super key (like GNOME)? Is that still in the works?

Yes, I don't know all of the details, but most of the system config files like fstab and such are modifiable. I automount my NAS by putting a command in fstab.

What instructions or guides do you recommend?

The project linked is a fork of the version on F-Driod. You can download the APK directly from the Github and use it just fine.

Does WhatsApp not work at all on Graphene OS or do you just need to enable Google Play services for it to work? (I do understand why you personally may not want to enable the Play services, but I'm just curious about the potential capabilities).

I guess so. I hit the grub menu when booting and I see the image version changing there as well.

I think Ublue is only set to automatically check for updates once per day. If there were only a few updates available, it's possible your system just didn't check yet that day.

See if your /etc/rpm-ostreed.conf has automatic updates set to "stage." I think that should be the default.

See update section in this FAQ, which tells you what config disables automatic updates.

A static site generator like Jekyll hosted on Github pages might be a good option. It's free and easy-ish to configure without knowing much code since there are an abundance of open source templates around.

It will probably get made eventually, but they have said there is no ETA for now. In the meantime, you can upvote the suggestion on their feedback forums.