First of all, we gave a whole series of lectures about Node at Code Weekend. Also here’s more about Node.js. You should check both out if you’re interested in learning Node!
An important piece of any complete web application is a server backend. Users make requests to your server, which then returns web pages to them as responses. One of the simplest and most lightweight frameworks is Node.js, making it an excellent choice for beginners. Node.js allows users to write server-side code in JavaScript. If you would like to try a different option for your app, you could also try Ruby on Rails, which is based on the Ruby language, and Django, which is based on Python. Almost every language has a corresponding backend framework or library.
If you don’t like either of these, a simple Google search for “Node.js tutorials” or something similar will provide many free options.
If you are new to JavaScript, it’s a good idea to get comfortable with it before diving into Node. Javascript is an extremely important part of web development, even for apps not using Node. There are plenty of good JavaScript tutorials, including:
As with the above, plenty of other options can be found easily through Google.