Welcome to Discourse Meta!
As Hawke mentioned it is a good idea to learn the back end with install process.
Since you do have a starting point with Yammer. You will want to map out your category/categories to se
Operate discussions. You can also use tags instead of additionally
ie Category - PC Computers
Tags - Intel, Amd, Nvidia, Motherboards
If self hosting you also need to look at a mail server. Hosting may include a mail server but not sure.
With self hosting @pfaffman has a few pretty cool things like a Dashboard for a small yearly fee with some support if you have trouble.