Project Part I: Starting out

First thing to do is to install node and npm, obviously, but assuming that is done, go and create a folder and put a git repository on it (init, use github, .gitignore swap files, etc).

Next, call npm init, which is going to populate package.json for you. You can start installing plug-ins once you've done this. I'm not too sure what plug-ins I need for now, but at least let's use

$ npm install express --save

Since I'm going to use Heroku, here's their version of hello world, which I'm calling app.js:

var express = require('express');
var app = express();

app.set('port', (process.env.PORT || 5000));
app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

app.get('/', function(request, response) {
  response.send('Hello World!');
});

app.listen(app.get('port'), function() {
  console.log("Node app is running at localhost:" + app.get('port'));
});

Follow the starting steps on Heroku website, but most importantly, create a file called Procfile containing the one liner (telling the server what to run at start)

web: node app.js

You can also run the server locally using

$ foreman start web

... and that's it, should be up and running online.