I've acquired a hostgator vps level 1 account to use with node.js development. But when it comes to servers I'm a bit of a noob so I was wondering if the more experienced developer could give me suggestion of to setup my new account to work best with node.js. What would you recommend me to install. Apache? Python? Php? and so on?
Would you recommend me to use Haraka as an email server?
I'm planning to use this server for websites and services with node.js as the backend.
Any suggestions would be appreciated and could possible be good for other getting the same type of account. =)
PHP and Python have no relation to Node.js/Javascript. Remember that, unlike PHP apps which rely on a third party web server (i.e. Apache/Nginx/IIS), Node.js apps act as their own web server. If you don't need Apache, don't install it. It takes up resources and will most likely be listening on port 80 (preventing your node app from doing so).
Node requires only a very minimal environment. You should install Node.js, and probably a C++ compiler. Other than that, it simply depends on what you need for your particular app.
There are lots of resources for how to get started with node. For example: http://stackoverflow.com/a/5511507/2210128