I'm running a node.js service (statsd) on CentOS 6. What's the proper way to daemonize and start such a service?

Potential Daemonizers--are daemonizers supposed to be language-specific or general?:

• forever (node-specific)
• daemonize
• nohup (presumably wrong)
• start-stop-daemon(debian-only? is this for daemonizing or starting/stopping? what is the Centos equivalent?)
• Should the app itself really know how to daemonize itself and then have a -d flag? (e.g. via node-daemonize2 or forever-monitor?)

Service starters--should these be from the system/distro, or should they be from monitoring tools such as monit?:

• service? is really /etc/init.d on CentOS?
• service? is really Upstart on Ubuntu?
• monit?
• daemontools?
• runit?

I'm unfortunately new to this--where can I read up on what is the most standard, classic, reliable way of doing this?