Here's that website.

It's a thing of beauty, isn't it?

The first decision about your website -- once you've decided to have a website --is what web designer to use.

You may be thinking that you need to find a spot on the internet first, but often that decision follows the question of who should design your site.

Lots of web designers will host your site for you once they've designed it, and most companies that host websites will design your site if you host it with them. Not all, though. There are web designers who just do the graphic design part of the job and then you have to go find your own host. You can also design your own site, either by hand with your HTML cheat sheet on the desk beside you, or by using templates, and use a free or low-cost web hosting service.

The website you're reading right now is free. It's a place for the authors to sound off and share, not a marketing tool. Maybe a free website could be used as a marketing tool, but maybe your art deserves an artist, too.

Designing your own, or hiring someone just to design the page and then finding your own host, also usually means that you have to keep up with the site yourself. We'd say, don't commit yourself to that unless you're sure you can do it.

Josepha's site was built by a web designer with a template that he designed himself, much as we designed this website with a template from the Weebly people. Well, okay, his work is art and ours is just a recipe, or maybe a frozen dinner that we heat up, but the point is this: Josepha's website isn't 100% custom work, so the cost is less than it otherwise would be. If you want to step up from making your own with free templates to having something designed for you, a service like this one can be a good option.

The big question in choosing a web designer and then in choosing among the services the designer offers has got to be this: what kind of investment are you prepared to make, and will it pay off?

We'll let you know how Josepha's experiment works out.

Most of the music teachers we know are as busy as they want to be and turning away students, too. They fit in performances when they can, or perhaps they've given up performing.

Where do they get their students? Mostly word of mouth. Mark and Mary Ann both started at a music school, and their highly successful students are the best advertising they could ever want. Debbie's private students come from the congregation of the church where she directs, or the classrooms of the school where she teaches. When Stacy left the stage for the studio, she had fans lining up to study with her.

That's fine for established musicians. What about the newcomers? Josepha's been out of school for just about two years, and has had her first conducting job for one year. She still relies on her day job. She can't rely on word of mouth for all her students.

So she is trying out a website for marketing. Josepha's site was designed by a company called SharpHue. We'll be following the progress of the site -- and her career -- in these pages.

You stand in the middle of a giant, masking tape music staff, hands on hips and surveying the glorious mess around you. There are hollow reeds in a pile behind you with red and black tape on the ends, a musty stack of newsprint at your feet covered in simple tunes written large and happy. The piano waits, top gaping, for new found tuning skills and the open windows allow a breeze to send loose scraps of  paper flying in circular patterns about the ankles. A black tape player crackles the music from the curriculum, filling you with inspiration to create more exciting games and more colorful bulletin boards.

The brilliantly red and orange sunset oozes in the windows while you raise dusty plumes from long slumbering books in a dingy closet.

"I pray," you exclaim aloud from the center of the room, "for God to give me patience, to grant me a persevering heart and a well focused mind. I pray for guidance and for a willingness to learn as well as the strength to teach. I pray for the children I will be guiding and I pray for their parents who will, hopefully, be constantly hearing the fruits of my labor. I pray for love and hope and Christianly bearings to better lead and be better lead."

And until then, you continue the mad cleaning and planning and organizing.

Afterall, what's teaching without a little inspiration?

Michael Davis's Music is the Revolution ofers mini grants to K-12 music teachers. The application is a PDF file. Check it out!