Update: 

I messed with the .env and updated the local domain. now the web socket connects to wss://notes.<mydomain>.org/relay, which should work ok for what I need right now without messing with the Wordpress install I have at http://<mydomain>.org. I connected to the relay with my client and successfully posted to the relay. 

I guess my question now is whether there is any way to take off the “/relay” at the end of the wss url. 

 

 there is no way to take off the "/relay" 

 got it, thank you for being responsive!!  

 Well you could set up an nginx forwarding rule to forward relay.notes.yoursite.org to notes.yoursite.org/relay 

 ahhh thanks my friend! i have never done that before but now that you tipped me ima research how to do that. if you have any resources that explain how to do it please share.