How do you find talented programmers to build a website?

You look at their portfolio and check out some of their previous customers. Preferably, you have someone with some technical knowledge help you with the evaluation.

That helps.

Second question—how do you find one that works for equity?

OK, that is much less likely.

Elance.com is a good place to start looking for options

A great place to find very talented programmers is through the StackExchange network. Start by looking at http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ As for finding someone to work for equity… you can try posting a position but great programmers expect great compensation.

Unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to hire a programmer or two, you’re better off learning PHP, HTML, CSS, MySQL, and Javascript yourself and build it yourself over the course of a year or so…