Very briefly, a web designer is concerned primarily with the look of a site — the graphics, the colors, the layout, the readability. A developer works behind the scenes — setting up databases, writing and installing scripts, making certain that the site complies with standards and functions at its best in all browsers and on all operating systems.

A good web design firm like Pisces Moon will have this dual expertise and be capable of both design and development.

First, we need to understand what those goals are. Do you want to offer items for sale or increase your existing sales? Create a portfolio of work available 24/7? Offer information about you and your business? Educate others on a topic you know about?

Once we have worked together to identify your goals and prioritize them in order of importance to you, we can plan the best way to be sure your website can help achieve them.

With appropriate written permission, yes, you can.

Works in the public domain such as quotations from Shakespeare or an image of a Caravaggio painting are also acceptable.

Your site should always be an expression of the best of your own work, however — so would it make sense to use your site to showcase someone else's words or images?

Short answer: we can't guarantee it. Unfortunately, tricks such as using Javascript to disable right click do not stop someone from making a simple screen capture. And people who have disabled Javascript in their browsers don't even have to do that.

To protect your work as much as possible, we will post copyright notices wherever appropriate on your site, and we'll make sure that your images are large enough and of proper resolution for good web viewing but not adequate for high-resolution printing.

Ultimately, the only completely safe answer is that if you are that worried about your images being stolen, don't put them on the web.

We can build sites with interactive elements or movies using Flash. We do not build entire Flash websites for a number of reasons, the most important being that a Flash website cannot be seen by search engines such as Google. That would mean that it would not appear at all on Google, even if someone entered your name or domain name as a search term. Why pay for an invisible website?

Yes, we can. We will need your FTP or control panel login information in order to move your current files to your new website space. We will also need access to your domain name account to change the nameservers.

No. If you have a website currently with another host, or if you have a webhost you want to use, we'll be happy to work with them. We will need your FTP or control panel login and password in order to upload and manage your pages.

Because your site shares server space and bandwidth with other websites, we cannot allow any content or operation that uses a disproportionate share of resources. This includes but is not limited to:

• certain CGI and PHP scripts;
• any kind of distributed computing software, including but not limited to SETI@home, Node Zero and Folding@home;
• any type of interactive real-time chat applications that require server resources;
• any software that interfaces with an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network;
• any file sharing, bit torrent or other P2P network services, client or server software;
• any gaming servers such as counter-strike or half-life.

Artwork including nudity is permitted; pornography is not.

Our most popular package is shared hosting at $12 per month with a 15% discount if paid annually ($122.40 per year).

Our standard plan includes:

• one domain name, if you do not already own one;
• 300 MB storage;
• 2.5 GB bandwidth usage per month;
• cPanel;
• 3 FTP Accounts;
• 10 Email Accounts, with unlimited forwarding;
• PHP and CGI-bin;
• 3 MySQL Databases;
• Web-based email.
• FrontPage extensions can be installed, if required.

"Shared hosting" means that you are renting a portion of the space on a very powerful computer called a server. Most websites for artists and small businesses can easily fit within a few hundred megabytes of space, whereas a server might be capable of holding one million megabytes or more. Since most small website owners don't need or want to pay $500 or more per month to rent a whole server, we divide that castle-sized capacity into "apartments" so that dozens of websites can share the space — and the cost.

Not at this time. If there is demand for it, we may offer private server hosting in future.

Absolutely not. You own the domain name and will be listed as the Registrant. We, however, must be listed as the Technical Contact and have access to the account in order to perform necessary back-end maintenance.

If you already own your domain name, are purchasing webhosting only, and know how to set your nameservers, then we need not be listed on your domain name contact list at all.

If you host your site with us, one domain name per year is included in the hosting fee. Additional domain names are $15.00 per year each.

We know you hate hearing the phrase "It depends," but...  it depends.

In general, a small site done in static HTML will be the least expensive, generally running from $300 to $750 completed. Larger sites with databases, shopping carts, or other optional features will cost considerably more. Talk to us. Once we have an idea of what you need, we can offer a no-obligation tailored estimate of cost.

No, we don't. Although some other providers do offer standard templates with a set number of images at a set price, we believe that every artist's work is different and each website should be just as unique.

You are welcome to look at the other sites we've designed as well as any others you especially like, and tell us what you like about them. We will be happy to work with you to incorporate similar elements — but your site will not — and should not — be a copy of anyone else's.

For web design or development work, we ask for a 25% deposit once the contract has been signed by both parties. When the site goes live and is accepted as complete, the balance is due within 30 days.

For webhosting, payment can be made monthly. There is a 15% discount if you choose to pay annually.

For web design or development work, we can make arrangements for monthly payments spread over 12 months. Some conditions apply.

A small site can be completed in about two weeks once we have all the images and other needed information. Larger sites may take up to two months from start to finish.

"RSS" stands for "Really Simple Syndication," and it's a way of automatically sending out updates to subscribers. Think of it as analogous to a radio broadcast — you need a piece of code on your site that transmits new information to the web when it is posted, and the recipients need a feed reader, a piece of software that allows them to receive the information and display it in their browser.

The advantage to the receiver is clear — he or she automatically receives any new updates you post to your site, just as a radio listener automatically receives music and news broadcasts. The disadvantage to you might be less clear: You are sending information out, but you have no idea who is receiving. If you are trying to build a contact list, an RSS feed is probably not your best option.

Let's say that your real email address is ArtDiva@BigISP.com and we have set up for you a personal address of YourName@YourDomain.com. We tell the mail server to take all mail that comes to YourName@YourDomain.com and automatically deliver it to ArtDiva@BigISP.com. You don't have to change your email program or remember to check your mail on the web — your email works just like it always has. But now you have a personal address that uses your website name.

Yes. Go to www.YourDomain.com/webmail/ and enter your full email address (YourName@YourDomain.com) and password when prompted.

We can't promise to prevent all spam, but we can take actions to help minimize it. We have spam trapping tools which can be set either to mark suspected spam and let you look at it, or to automatically delete suspicious emails. We can set filters to look for common spam words used in emails and either mark them for your review or for deletion. We also have blacklisting tools to allow you to reject all emails from a single address or from an entire domain.

We have several CMS options to choose from, ranging from a simple visual editing system that works like a word processor — open a web page, edit your text, change out your images, publish it — to a more complicated but flexible system which interacts with a MySQL database and produces dynamic pages. Let's talk about your needs and we will recommend the best system for you during the evaluation process.

Of course! If your mailing list is relatively small — under 250 names — there are no restrictions. Once your list of names grows larger than that, we'll reevaluate your needs and may recommend moving to a commercial mailing list service. This is to prevent overuse of server resources and to keep your domain from being blacklisted as a spammer by some of the large ISPs such as AOL and Earthlink.

We can set up a blog on your domain with no problem. However, some of the free blog sites make it extremely difficult to transfer your old posts and in some cases it may not be possible. If maintaining your archive of posts is important to you, we'd recommend staying with your current blog and placing a link to it on your website.

Search engine optimization is a very loosely defined term and can mean many different things to different developers — anything from a one-time submission of your site to Google and Yahoo, to a rigorous ongoing exploration and testing of keywords and text placement to achieve the highest possible search engine rating.

During the design/coding phase, we make sure that each page on your site contains relevant title, description, keyword, and metatag information. We optimize your page code to make it easy for the search engines to find important words and terms. When the site is complete, we submit it to the main search engines — usually Google, Yahoo, and Altavista.

We do not engage in so-called "black-hat" practices such as link farming or keyword spamming in an attempt to artificially inflate your ranking.

No. That was once the case, but too many sites abused the process by buying or trading links which had no purpose other than to pump up the rating — a process known as "link farming." Google stopped counting incoming links as a measure of site quality several years ago.

You always own the copyright to your words and images.

If you design your site and simply have us code it to your specifications, you also own the copyright to the design. We do reserve the right to reuse code developed for your site on other sites we develop, as long as no visible element of your design is included.

If we design the site, your fee includes the right to use the design as long as it is hosted with us. We retain copyright to the design unless otherwise negotiated in the initial contract.

Like your domain name, you own the software or the license for purchased programs installed on your site.

In order to minimize your final costs, we prefer to have you purchase the software or license directly. That way you are listed as the owner and you know the price has not been artificially marked up.

We hope you will give us every opportunity to meet your expectations and needs before deciding to move on. However, if you decide to move your site to another host, simply open your account with your new hosting company and ask them to contact us to transfer the domain name and repoint the nameservers.

You may move any software owned or licensed by you, as well as your domain name. Depending on the design rights in your original contract, you may need to create a new design for your content or arrange to purchase the rights to the design from us at that time.