Yes, there is some lightning channel management necessary once you start your node. But the BTCPay server part is literally downloading a package and hitting “start”. There are some background configurations that are quite complex that the Embassy handles for you.

I’ll do some digging on the lightning node side for good resources, but honestly the best way is do some reading and talk with people. You’ll want to set aside some BTC—a few million sats at least, preferably more if you want to do any serious transacting. You can also buy lightning channels from liquidity providers so that you can receive payments. There are tons of plugins you can load and run that are configurable for all sorts of needs like a point of sale for an online store or even hosting your own podcast and accepting sats as listeners stream it

The BTCpay server docs are excellent. The hardest part of this is gaining SSH (command line) access to your embassy and setting up a reverse proxy to Tor so that you can allow others to access your BTCPay server instance in a regular web browser. But with zero prior knowledge I was able to do it—it’s like putting together a Lego set.