div.blog-post
	h2.blog-post-title First Blog Post
	p.blog-post-meta July 21st 2015 by Mitchell
	p
		|My first blog post introduces this website and the motives behind it.
		|I discuss setting up a Node.js webserver for the first time and 
		|my experiences with it thus far.
	hr
	p
		|I have had this site up for awhile now, but I've decided to turn it
		|into a blog style website, more or less. I first started working on the site
		|because I wanted to learn new web development tools, in this case, Node.js and MongoDB.
	p
		|I already had previous experience with SQL databases and other server side scripting
		|languages such as PHP and JSP, but I heard good things about Node.js and I wanted to
		|familiarize myself with a NoSQL database. At first, Node.js was a bit confusing to work
		|with and figure everything out. Now that I am starting to get the hang of Node and MongoDB
		|I am enjoying them more and more.

	h2 Setting up Node.js for the first time
	p
		|There are multiple ways to get up and running with Node. Node uses "modules" and has some
		|that are already built in. Others need to be installed with the NPM package manager, which
		|will become your friend. I am going focus on installing Node.js with Express, which is a
		|web framework for Node.js.
	code $ sudo apt-get install nodejs
	br
	code $ sudo apt-get install npm
	br
	p
		|Once you have both Node.js and NPM installed, install Express and MongoDB.
		|We are going to install and use express generator to easily create a skeleton that we can
		|work from.
	code $ npm install express-generator -g
	br
	p 
	|Based on your system, installing MongoDB may be a bit different. 
	a(href="http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/") Here is a guide on how to install.
	p Once express generator is installed, it is extremely simple to set up a new Node application.
	code $ express myapp
	br
	p This will generate a new fold "myapp" with prebuild folders and files.
	code $ cd myapp
	br
	code $ npm install
	br
	code $ npm start
	p
		|Now as easy as that sounds, you have a Node web application running on your machine.
		|You can navigate to your web app at localhost:3000 (It's configured to use port 3000 by default)
	p 
		|Express organizes everything nicely in the 
		a(href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller") Model View Controller 
		|software pattern. Folders are split up into views, routes, and public files. 
		|If you are implementing a database, you would also create a "models" folder. 
		|There is also a folder which contains Node modules. 
		|When you use NPM to install new modules this is where they will be located.
	p
		|Node is a very powerful tool that I plan on exploring more in the future.
		|As development of this site continues, I plan to submit more content similar to this.