The software you would use would be here or you could use the exact one they’re using by getting it here . As far as what you need to do and know. You need to know websites, how to code a bit in php (not a guru but functional knowledge), mysql knowledge would be good too, and a decent idea of the operating system (namely Linux) would be helpful, but not necessarily necessary. You also need a domain name and a host. You can build your own server and host it yourself using some of the tutorials on howtoforge and use dyndns but if you have no experience with any of this, I’d go and get hosting and a domain name. You can get it all relatively cheap. I wont plug any particular one, except to say that GoDaddy’s interface blows banana balls.