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I'm a PHP programmer and I'm discovering the world of NodeJS.

I installed Node on my local computer and that's ok, I can make some stuff to work, but I'm not quite used to the fact of using terminal/CMD to do my programming. But I think I could bear with that.

I'm pretty used to the fact that when I need to place something on the Internet, I buy a domain, 99.9% of them have PHP installed on, and that's ok, so I can get along great with few easy steps.

This seems to me totally different in NodeJS. I tried asking my Hosting if they could install NodeJS on my server, they said no.

I tried to find a NodeJS hosting, they exist but the cost is crazy, they are asking the same price I pay for a full year "normal" hosting but for a single month...

Even with www.openshift.com I see there is free hosting but with third level domain and I'm not used to not seeing my files and not being able of doing WHAT I WANT.

So, probably I'm not getting quite well how this NodeJS works, can someone explain me how Node can be used for production and if I'm on the right path?

Do I have to have a special domain or a special setup server to have Node installed or I can put it in my current host?

Mr.Web
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    A simple VPS-type host, as offered by Linode or Digital Ocean, is usually very inexpensive. It takes some system administration knowledge, but having that is not a bad thing. It will give you more flexibility with hosting options than being stuck with "shared" hosting providers. You can also do it with [Amazon Elastic Beanstalk](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/create_deploy_nodejs.html) or [Google Compute](https://cloud.google.com/solutions/nodejs/). – tadman Apr 08 '15 at 21:24
  • I found modulus.io very easy to get started. See if that is closer to what you want. They do charge $15 a month, though you can get the first month free. OpenShift is more complex and you better be good at SSH to do anything. I don't know of any node hosts with a traditional cPanel interface. – user949300 Apr 08 '15 at 22:01

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Well node's command line is not what a node website uses to run. They use node to kick off a long-running process. Something like "node somefile.js" is how you would execute a pre-made script on the command line. That starting file then calls in more files via require or some other construct.

You're making a website? There are tons of guides out there to help you choose, but http://expressjs.com/ is one of the most common frameworks. You can follow the guides there to mess around. Heroku is a free host for low traffic sites. It is perfect for just creating something and messing around.

Hope that helps!

The Honorable Samuel Clemens
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