Opinion
Yes the Gauntlet is a place to test the waters in a safe environment and get critiques from other members that are on the same path so to speak. These are all people that are learning along with you

I don't believe that you need Hits Connect URLs in the gauntlet, you do not need to be tracking your page in the Gauntlet.

The Gauntlet lets you know how many times your page has been seen and what comments others leave, that's all you need to know

Once you have come up with a recipe people like then you can put it into a hits connect url and start promoting it and tracking it etc etc