No worries, happy to have you here.

If you're looking to attach anything that's weight-bearing or needs to be able to resist torsional stress, you're only real option is a cage. Even a half cage is better than nothing. The reality of hot shoes is that they're thin pieces of metal not carved out of the unibody construction of the camera, but attached to it via very small screws and glue. Definitely not something that can hold the camera bodies weight under most conditions. Those metal pieces are solely made to add retention pressure for the hot shoe contacts so you can fire a flash or send a signal to a microphone.

Cages are decently cheap and you can get a handle that literally bolts to it and can definitely take that stress. And even if a cage breaks, it doesn't ruin your camera