As for organization and removing, symbolic links could work but if port forwarding is over your head, filesystem nuances might also not mean much to you.

I can do symlinks. Works when I can, so I might try keeping the original files one day or two, but that really depends on if the files are even being served (see below), else it's much more important to me to convert the files to a format more suitable for me in terms of all of storage, compatibility, consumption, etc.

In terms of networking it's less "its over my head" and more "I'm not using my own connection so it's not like I have access to the modem to change things". As much as I have tried different configurations in qbittorrent, torrents rarely seem to seed and when they do it's only for brief periods of time (nowhere near enough to 1:1 it unless you are seeding, like, the Marvel Movie Of The Day).