Thanks, it's definitely helpful as a comparison to my own activities the past month. Though in my case, I talked to an acquaintance about what I wanted to do and got his advices on what would be needed to build my idea, such as the languages, database, hosting, etc., so that I had an overall idea of how everything should work. Afterward, did a lot of background research too.
As for coding, part of the reason I'm not hiring a developer is because I don't have the money, so I'm making it up with having a lot of time and effort to spend.