Hi all,
I've used openwrt in the past as a bridge/wifi ap but never as the main router so I have some familiarity.
I was able to ssh via the public ip which I disabled. Is there anything else I should know? I haven't seen anything else from my research.
Also what would be the proper method of allowing/dropping data from the outside (verizon)? I could do it from ip but rather do it by port etc in case the public ip changes.
This is fine, the OpenWrt firewall relies on the zone model, which is based on the source/destination interface which your traffic goes in/out, so the destination IP address doesn't really matter as long as it is the same host.
Incoming WAN traffic is blocked by default as well as the WAN to LAN forwarding.