To verify Node.js installlation, run the version check command:

node --version

A Node.js application consists of three core components:

1. Module imports using require()
2. Server creation to handle client requests
3. Request/resopnse handlign logic

Here's how to create a simple HTTP server:

const server = require('http');

server.createServer((req, res) => {
    res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain; charset=utf-8'});
    res.end('Node.js server response\n');
}).listen(8080);

console.log('Server active on port 8080');

For HTML responses:

const http = require('http');

http.createServer((request, reply) => {
    reply.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/html'});
    reply.write('<meta charset="UTF-8">');
    reply.end('<h1>Node.js Server Response</h1>');
}).listen(3000);

Key observations:

• Content-Type header determines response format (text/plain vs text/html)
• Character encoding can be specified in headers or HTML meta tags
• Avoid well-known ports (80, 23) for development servers