I hear there are no stupid questions but when you're expected to know this, it's really scary to ask. What may seem like duh is usually something everyone is waiting for. How the heck do you make facebook Graph API calls anyway?
So here's where I am. Social networking and mobile apps is where it's at. It's all a bit overwhelming when you're going about it alone and at the same time somewhat reassuring to hear facebook was built by a bunch of hacks (ha!).
Paper prototyping is the way to go. There are many wireframing software but drawing it up on a piece of paper is the fastest. Think fail quickly and get it to it. To hire or do it yourself? Buying time may be worthwhile. I've been fiddling with Firefox/Firebug as an HTML editor which is recommended by facebook developers. If there's anything that seems worth learning for a non-programmer in web development is HTML and CSS. Drupal is a little heavy. New modules put a strain on performance. The cleaner the HTML the better. I still can't believe Netscape is dead. I am going back and forth with Drupal, Joomla!, Firefox/Firebug and notepad. It turns out there's no one approach, it's the best tool for the job. For now, I'm playing with Drupal themes.
On my first post, I've been pushing Hostgator but Facebook partnered with Joylent and Amazon Web Services. Eventually any facebook apps should be hosted by AWS.
