Starting up a node.js project

I'm about to start a project that's going to be a web site for storing photos. The method for uploading shall be drag and drop (from the desktop, same as Imgur), and it shall be possible to rate the photos as well commenting them.

For the project I'm going to use Node.js as well as HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery. The thing is that I'm a total newbie on Node.js and really could use some help regarding getting started. For the project I will of course need a database, and I have understood that MongoDB is a good choice. Is there any templates for this combination, so that I don't need to start from scratch?

I have installed Node.js and followed some tutorials but I really feel that I want to a template if there is one.

Thanks in advance!

As you said you are a beginner you can take the best independent modules for your project and start using. Instead of having a pre-defined package of necessary components as a single module. Problem is you may end up not understanding the whole pack and become more biased.

So, I would suggest to use Expressjs (Best Choice) for url routing as mentioned above.

And,

File upload management:

formidable - a high performance file upload server with file parts reading and progress notifiers etc.

Template Engine (Markup libs for your custom htmls):

Jade

coffeekup

And consider Bootstrap as well for prebuilt templates if in case you need it.

Mongo - Good choice.

Mongo Modules

These libs should help.

Take a look at HTML5 Boilerplate + Express.js

As a basic starting point, this is a popular framework:

http://expressjs.com/

Here you will find some links to example applications:

Node.js Web Application examples/tutorials

https://github.com/heroku/facebook-template-nodejs

Open Source Node.js (and Express) projects

Express JS is good but I would recommend you have a look at Railway JS as well. It is based on Express with support for numerous template engines and database adapters (including MongoDB). It is a lot more modular so you should not have much trouble working with it (in my opinion). Check out: Uploading images using NodeJS, Express, and Mongo too.

Here is a list of resources that I have compiled using themeefy to start a node.js project http://www.themeefy.com/AvinashEga2/nodejs

I think Tower.js is something like what you're after.