Can you see the data you copied inside the container? I’m quite sure you either don’t have the volume mounted, or the config files refers to a different folder than the gitea one did. Did your gitea container store data in sqlite as you are copying raw files rather than migrating a database?

I’d go with lxc instead of containers if you don’t fully understand docker. Overhead isn’t much different and you get a “normal server” where you can drop in forgejo to replace gitea

Docker can be many things - and portainer is a nice replacement for those using docker for running services. It’s got a great web interface. For automation and most development docker and compose is my pick. Also a good fit for those that only use X to spawn terminals.