Hi Chris,
Thank you very much for your kind words, I do try my best to answer and help with everything I can.
The reason for not recommending filters is purely for better pefromance. The index table uses so called indexed queries, which is a database feature, but there are certain rules that a query needs to obey for the database engine to use the index and not to switch to different methods automatically.
This is the main reason the index table can be significantly faster and less resource heavy. Adding filters to the mix is going to reduce the chances significantly of having indexed queries and the database will use different methods more often – because with filters table joins must be used and joining a huge set of data with another to get the connections between the objects can be resource heavy.
Still, you can try them, it very heavily depends on the datbase and the exact scenario. If you see significant slowdown, then it is probably because of that. You can also the index plugin to make more indices on some of the core tables, that can help greatly.
As for the second issue, I need to check, however I can’t login with the details. Can you please check the username and the password?