nodeJS-Express or Meteor or Derby

Question

Recently I'm interested in doing research about nodejs, nosql (mostly mongodb, redis) and decide to make a simple blog using those modern techs (which university professors wont teach me about). Through this progress I think I can improve my own javascript skill and many things about network service development.

A simple blog is a good start to go, then I find out that nodejs on Github and other node-based web frameworks: express, locomotive, railway, etc... problem is they have too many forks.

Surely that I can work with some of them by my efforts, because the MVC logic seems the same to all. The point is that I want to focus on one framework which is the trend for next 1 year or more later. Express seems well, says railway, locomotive are based on Express, I'll be good if I follow Express at last, but then I found Meteor and Derby. Now it does mess me a lot about choices. People said that use proper tool for your own task, here now I'm having time to waste on some, but not all of them. I think I should clear up some of my thoughts by questioning:

1. Is that meteor and derby are forks of nodejs?

2. Should I choose meteor, derby or locomotive, railway or just simply start with express from the scratch to make my own MVC setup?

3. Why do people use Redis for sessions along with Mongodb (or CouchDB)? Why dont we just use Mongodb for sessions and main data?

Answer 1

1. No
2. I liked starting with Express because it gives you basic tools and you can build a project structure that works for you.
3. Redis is super fast but there also is session middleware for mongodb and couchdb.