Eh, as someone who runs a bunch of smaller sites and forums, I've not had any issues with scammers or hackers gaining access to them. Most of them are looking for obvious vulnerabilities via some sort of script, and usually assume the file names and database structure are the same for every site they target.

It's plenty possible to run an independent site with no issues if you keep things up to date and change a few things to thwart the most common attack attempts.