http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/internet/reducing-the-load-time-of-your-site-through-image-optimization.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/reducing-the-load-time-of-your-site-through-image-optimization.html Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600
Most of the time, the text on your website will load promptly, even with a dial-up connection. The culprit that usually slows down the loading time on your site dramatically is the images. It is important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users, but to not slow down the overall performance of your site. This is something you must take into consideration when planning your website design.

After you have decided which images you are going to use on your site, you should then move onto optimizing them to enable efficient loading time. When optimizing an image you are removing all the unnecessary information to reduce its file size. If done correctly, you will not alter the appearance of your picture at all.

Most images that come from digital cameras and Stock Photo sites are usually very large. Sometimes these pictures can be as large as 3200 pixels wide and 2000 pixels high, which is way too big for a website. The ideal size of an image for a website is between 200 and 400 pixels wide. This sizing is important to have the picture placed ideally on your site, whilst still allowing space for the menus and text.

If you have large images that you want to use on your site, they must be scaled down in Photoshop or another image editor. Ideally you can scale down the physical pixel size, which will reduce the picture without altering its quality. Another way that you can lower the image size when embarking on your web design is to save the pictures in a certain format.

You could re-save your pictures as JPEG images, which is a format that takes out unnecessary information while still retaining the information needed to display the picture without loss of visual quality. It is good to differentiate when saving pictures, because saving a picture as a photo will be different to a logo. A photo will have better quality, with a mix of colors being saved to a JPEG, whilst a logo with lots of flat areas of color can be better optimized saving it as a GIF.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that images are very important to your website. They will capture the attention of the visitor, and are normally the most important portrayal of the message you want to send out. To save loading time you do not even need to put as many pictures on your site as you think. There are thousands of beautiful templates available to the modern website designer. Many of them will be able to give you what you would be looking for with images and other fancy effects.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a web design and web hosting company that specialises in building cost-effective websites and hosting for small business owners in South Africa.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/business/communication/the-cellphone-ringtone-craze.html http://www.articletrader.com/business/communication/the-cellphone-ringtone-craze.html Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600
It was only a matter of time before people would want to personalize their cell phones even more. As there are so many people with cell phones, it started to get annoying when one phone would ring, because no one knew who the phone belonged to. Over time the cell phone companies started releasing phones with a wider assortment of ring tones. This started a craze and became quite a novelty. People would smother their grins when a phone went off with a quirky digital tune. Sometimes people would grumble in annoyance at a high-pitched ring tone sounding from the owner's pocket or handbag.

As with the changing and restless nature of society, people started to tire of these digital ring tones that came standard with all the phones. The cell phone developers saw a gap in the market, and once the technology was available to them they expanded the software. All of a sudden new phones were being released that had polyphonic ring tones included. These polyphonic ring tones sounded even more like real music. The market for services that sold ring tones grew quickly. Suddenly cell phone owners could pick up free pamphlets at stores advertising long lists of ring tones. These tones were still the standard digital tones, but polyphonic tones were also available for the phones that had the right functionality.

As the years have passed and technology has advanced even more, cell phones have become much more computerized. It was only a matter of time before REAL music could be used as a ring tone on a cell phone. It started with only the most advanced and expensive phones, but then progressed quickly. Today almost all fairly recent models of cell phones will play actual songs that can be used as ring tones. These ringing alerts are called true tones, and are much more expensive than the simple digital tones were. With this advancement in technology the services selling cell phone ring tones exploded.

Nowadays it is hard to turn on the TV or open a newspaper without being inundated with advertisements for services offering cell phone ring tones. Most are subscription services that will provide you with a selected number of new true tones each week and month with a set cost. These true tones can be transferred onto a cell phone in MP3 format, and there are even memory cards that one can buy for their phone to provide them with more space. This means they can have as many songs as they like!

Of course this means almost no one's ring tones are the same anymore. The range of true tones available is innumerable and you can have almost anything as an alert that your phone is ringing – animal sounds, songs, different voices and so much more.

--
There are a plethora of options available today. Why don't you personalize your phone with one of the popular cell ring tones by visiting http://www.cellringtones.co.za

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/managing-your-hosting-files-with-cpanel.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/managing-your-hosting-files-with-cpanel.html Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600
Tools for Managing Your Site:

There are many tools available which you can use to manage your hosting environment. This is where all the files and databases for your website will belong, and conveniently the Cpanel will have a file manager. Some of the other tools on CPanel are Web Protect (.htaccess editor), the ability to edit MIME types and also control over Custom Error pages. There are also redirects which will send a visitor from one page to another. This helps if an old page has been renamed and the content has been moved. The user may only know the old address or link but the redirect will send them to the new page.

Control over Emails:

The email program on Cpanel will help you to manage a number of email accounts. You will be able to add, change and remove passwords. There is the option of Cpanel being provided by Webmail, which will make control of your email accounts easier. The Webmail option in your Cpanel enables you to read your emails through a web browser directly online without Outlook. This is convenient for travelers and people who use more than one PC to access their email. There are a number of different functionalities which you can access and maintain, namely Auto Responders, Spam filtering, Email Forwarding and Mailing Lists, to name the basics.

Website Statistics:

This is a very useful tool for tracking the efficiency and popularity of your website. There are various statistics packages available with your Cpanel hosting. You will be able to see how many unique visitors you receive on your sites, how many per day and you can also view the statistics over the period of a month or year. This assists you in determining whether the number of people visiting your site is increasing. You can also see which keywords are being used that direct people to your site. This helps greatly with search engine optimization, and altering your site accordingly for better traffic. Some of the Cpanel tools which will help achieve the statistical knowledge you require are the Webalizer web stats, the Analog stats, the Webalizer FTP stats, the AWStats, View latest visitors, the View Error Log modules and View Bandwidth Usage.

Backup Functions:

The backup function of the Cpanel is extremely important. It is important to backup information should there be loss due to any number of causes. The backup on Cpanel will allow you to make copies of account files and databases. The backup menu is comprehensive and will also allow you to download any automatic backups that were saved by your Cpanel administrator.

FTP Accounts Module:

This module controls all your FTP accounts. FTP is the program that is used to upload files to your server. With this module you will be able to control who has access to your site, and you will even be able to end their session if they are busy on FTP. You will be able to add, remove and change passwords and there are also Anonymous FTP controls and the ability to change the FTP Login message.

Advanced Cpanel Functions:

With Cpanel you can add and remove subdomains, Subdomain Redirects and their statistics. There are many more advanced functions on Cpanel which will be very useful to you when hosting your sites. These include Pre-Installed CGI Scripts, the CGI Wrapper, a random HTML generator, an Advanced Guestbook, and assorted chat facilities such as Java Chat, HTML chat and PhpMyChat. There are also Network Tools such as DNS Lookup and Traceroute. Your database can be managed using the MySQL module as well as PhpMyAdmin.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a web design and web hosting company that specialises in building cost-effective websites and hosting for small business owners in South Africa.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/the-benefits-of-a-dedicated-server.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/the-benefits-of-a-dedicated-server.html Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600
A dedicated server is completely different to a normal web hosting server. With a dedicated server you are not sharing your space with anyone else. You will own a server that no one else can have or interfere in, one that you have complete control over. In most cases you will be leasing the server from an upstream server provider, but nevertheless, you will be in charge of the server, and managing it on your own. You will be assigning hosting space to your clients and will be able to control what they are doing with their assigned space.

When you host with a shared hosting service provider, there are many problems that you can encounter. The problem is that you do not know which other sites are hosting with you. These sites that you are sharing with could be very large and may have large file downloads. They could also use up all the resources the hosting provider has available and this will cause problems for your sites. Your sites will be unable to load and could even be down sometimes. This will anger your hosting clients and will be very inconvenient!

The benefits of a dedicated server range widely, depending especially on what your needs are. For example, you will be able to choose the kind of operating system you want for your server, and any hardware that you wish. Dedicated servers are ideal for website hosting companies and will give you lots of space and freedom to work for and host plenty of other people without too many complications. With a dedicated server you will be able to keep track of the websites that are hosting with you. Therefore, if there is one that is using too much bandwidth or threatening the performance of your server, you can then attend to that problem quickly and promptly before it hinders the operation of your other sites.

Of course this can be a pitfall, as the maintenance can be overwhelming. There is a lot of responsibility put onto your shoulders, especially if something goes wrong with one of the websites that are hosting with you. Luckily, there are other options, such as taking on the services of a hosting company who will manage all the maintenance for you. In some cases, the service provider who you are hosting your dedicated server with will attend to a certain amount of the maintenance and problems that you may encounter.

Of course, a dedicated server will be more expensive than a shared hosting service provider. If you do your research correctly it is not difficult to attain that the dedicated server will land up being more cost-effective for you than any other option.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a web design and web hosting company that specialises in building cost-effective websites and hosting for small business owners in South Africa.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/choosing-the-best-web-hosting-plan.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-hosting/choosing-the-best-web-hosting-plan.html Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Firstly you have to make sure that you have a user friendly website with a clear interface that offers visible links. Your menu items and links should be clearly and properly labeled, and the content provided in your website must be interesting, effective and grammatically correct. Try to provide as much information as possible in a way that is not exhausting to read.

You will need to take the first steps to starting your business, such as domain registration. This can be done online, or even through your hosting company.

You must also take a look at search engine optimization or SEO strategies because you will want the maximum exposure possible for your site. Common search engine optimization strategies would be keyword listing, site code optimization, article marketing and top search engine placement.

When deciding to start an online business you will also need to look at website hosting. No matter how good your website looks, or how effective your SEO strategies are, if you don't have the right web hosting package there will be a problem. If your web hosting plan is not suitable for your website then the pictures and effects and text will not load properly and will therefore fail to be viewed.

There are many different web hosting plans out there. Obviously there are many companies that will offer "free web hosting" but you need to be fully aware of the future of your online company's needs before rushing into a free web hosting package.

Here are some key issues to address with regards to free website hosting:

Free web hosting plans will normally finance themselves through advertisements, meaning that your site will be covered in advertisements that will take up a lot of space. This can be very irritating to the viewer, and will also take away the professional look and feel of your site.

You will need to be ok with minimal web space and low bandwidth. Bandwidth is the measure of data volume that is transmitted over an internet connection. Free web hosting packages will not give you a lot of bandwidth. Low bandwidth means you cannot have lots of nice pictures on your site, or interesting text. Visitors will start to have problems when visiting your site, and will thus be deterred. If you intend on having a lot of traffic to your site then you will need a lot of bandwidth, something which free web hosting companies will not offer you.

It is wise to go with a good web hosting provider who will offer you the bandwidth that you need, with the option to upgrade should your site become more popular. A good web hosting company will have informative, contactable support and clear information on what you are signing up for.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a company that offers cost effective and efficient web hosting and website design. For more information on the best website hosting to suit your site's needs visit http://www.internet-web-hosting.co.za

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/good-website-design-practices.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/good-website-design-practices.html Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500
The first thing is to ensure that you have clear navigation directions on your site. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and user-friendly, even to people who are not particularly computer literate.

Reduce the number of images on your website. Too many images can make your site load slowly, which could lead to impatience from the browser who may then turn to an alternative site for their browsing needs. When choosing images to put on your site, ensure that they are relevant to your company and also eye-catching. Use only the essential and best pictures and utilize image editing programs to ensure the pictures have a minimum file size and will therefore load quickly.

Keep your text paragraphs to a specific, concise length. Include only the most necessary information, and if you need to have quite a bit of text, make sure that you break it up into short paragraphs. Having a substantial amount of text in one big condensed block will appear overwhelming to the visitor. They will then be deterred from reading your information because it looks too long.

It is important to do your research on www.w3.org to ensure that your website complies with web standards. Using this site will also help you determine whether your site is cross browser compatible. Your website may look great in Internet Explorer, but could possibly look awful in Firefox or Opera. You need to ensure that this will not happen, and your site will look the same across all browsers, so as to ascertain that you do not lose any visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Scripting languages should be used purely to manipulate or handle data, and not to create visual effects on your website. The reason for this is that heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and may even crash some browsers. This is sure to upset and deter visitors! Another problem is that scripts are not supported across all browsers, and thus you will also run the risk of losing potential visitors.

CSS can be used to style your page content. A lot of time and effort can be saved in designing your website by using CSS because they style all the elements of your website in one go.

There are many aspects to website design that need to be taken into consideration. Undoubtedly the most important of these is having an eye-catching website, but one that also does not appear to be too 'busy.' You want it to have all the information you need in an attractive way, portrayed in a way that can be used by anyone, anywhere.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you, a web design and web hosting company that specialises in building cost-effective websites and hosting for small business owners in South Africa.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-really-need.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/how-much-bandwidth-do-you-really-need.html Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500
It is good to err on the side of caution when happening upon service providers that offer "Unlimited Bandwidth." This is impossible, and any company offering this just wants to trap you. There are no broadband companies that offer unlimited bandwidth connection to their clients, so how is it possible that the web hosting companies that use them would be able to provide unlimited bandwidth?

When you come across a hosting company that offers "Unlimited Bandwidth" as one of its services, be sure to take a good look at its "Terms of Service" menu item or the "Acceptable Use Policy" section. Read the fine print about this so-called "unlimited" disclaimer. Some sites will just use that term to pique your interest, whilst others discuss your site "qualifying" for unlimited bandwidth. For example: your bandwidth may be "free" but if you go over 5 GB per month they will charge you. Some may even offer unlimited bandwidth but with a torrent of terms and conditions such as no image galleries, HTML or graphics! You may also not even be allowed to link other sites back to your own. Your website will basically be non-functional, and all because you have fallen into the "Unlimited Bandwidth" trap!

It is good to do proper research and to find a web hosting service provider that has a range of different services and specified bandwidth packages. It is also wise to find the web hosting companies that will allow an upgrade should the bandwidth you had chosen prove not to be enough after a while.

Before you decide on your bandwidth requirements, take the following factors into consideration:

Roughly how many users will be accessing your website?

How many pages does your website consist of? You have to realize that it is not the quantity but the quality of the text. You may have a few pages, but they could be filled with bandwidth chewing graphics. The HTML in your content will also use up a lot of data volume. You should even take links to other websites off your site into consideration too.

Large audio and video files will require a lot more space. You also need to think about whether you will be adding more in the future. Computer programs and file downloads will also require more bandwidth.

Virtual Reality and full-length three-dimensional audio and video presentations will require the most bandwidth of all.

It is good to watch your usage carefully over the first few months to check whether you have chosen the right bandwidth requirements for your website. Naturally, it will take you some time to determine whether the bandwidth you have chosen is right for your site, because you will need to see the amount of traffic you are receiving.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you and offers all your web hosting
and web design
requirements for small business owners in South Africa.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/technology/shared-hosting-selection-tips.html http://www.articletrader.com/technology/shared-hosting-selection-tips.html Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Some shared hosting providers provide outstanding service. It is in a shared hosting provider's best interest to make sure that all the sites being hosted on a server get equal amounts of bandwidth and that none of the sites implement practices or techniques that are detrimental to the other sites hosting on the same server. These include things such as running scripts that consume too many resources, sending out too many emails in one specific time period, or even getting too much traffic. A good shared hosting provider will check the servers for such eventualities and quickly suspend or disable the offending account.

If you are therefore thinking of engaging in such practices - think again, since you will just get your site shut down in no time.

How do you know which shared hosting company to go for? It is actually easy enough - the ones that have been in operation for a while all know the ropes. Just make use of a good web hosting review site and search for reviews of shared hosting providers.

These can be a good indication of the level of service that you might expect.

Things to watch out for when selecting a web hosting provider are some of the following points:

- Do you require 24x7 support? You might if you are sitting in a different time zone from your hosting provider and YOUR business hours are not their business hours! You might need to urgently resolve technical problems during your business hours that might actually fall outside of normal business hours for your hosting provider.

- Try and ascertain what the size is of their data center. If you can't glean this from their website or from a web hosting review website, ask them directly. Avoid companies that have only one or two servers. If anything goes wrong, they won't have a fallback server to provide a quick turnaround.

- Look at the features and benefits provided by the hosting company. Your hosting company should at least provide a control panel, as well as easy access to website statistics, as well as provision for email setups, managing sub-domains and installing scripts.

- Sometimes a hosting company offers various freebies and special deals to sweeten the deal. Hosting is very competitive and this is a way to get more customers. The benefit is yours since you might get free coupons for pay per click marketing, or free access to web templates for 3 months - keep your eyes open for these offers and if they are made by a reputable hosting company - go for them!

When looking for shared hosting it is always a good idea to check out the contract fine print. You need to make sure, particularly if this is particularly cheap hosting, that there are no hidden costs in the fine print. Examples of these might include things such as additional bandwidth or hard disk costs, additional costs for 'extra' features such as additional email boxes, or having to pay extra for things such as server side scripting or MySQL databases.

Shared hosting is always a slightly risky undertaking since you can never be 100% sure of the stability of the company. You therefore don't want to be tied into a hosting contract that expects you to pay for a couple of months up front - you might just end up losing that money. Another reason to only enter into a short term contract is that the hosting provider might not offer you the level of service that you were looking for. In this case you also don't want to be tied into a long term contract.

To safeguard yourself against any eventualities, make sure that you have a fallback plan in case your web host goes broke. This should include making your own backups of your website, as well as registering your domain with a third party registrar instead of through the hosting provider so that you retain control over your domain name.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you Web Hosting and Web Design. Download your free guide to a having a successful website from http://www.internet-web-hosting.co.za with essential but simple tips on making your website a success.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/why-use-joomla-for-web-design.html http://www.articletrader.com/internet/web-design/why-use-joomla-for-web-design.html Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500
Let me explain the benefits of using Joomla versus using anything else, and by anything else I mean comparing building a website using some type of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, such as Frontpage or Dreamweaver, or building a website with a comparative type of software package.

1. Joomla! is a Content Management system, which means that it is built to ensure that website pages can easily be maintained and updated. This includes for example, adding new pages or removing pages. This is the main advantage above building a website in straight forward HTML that would normally be the end product of using some type of HTML editor.

2. But why Joomla? Why not something else like a Microsoft based product or another commercial product?

* Joomla is Open Source, which means that there are no licensing fees payable, that you have often pay for a Microsoft product or a commercial product

* Because Joomla is Open Source, there is a huge pool of community resources available to provide support. The Joomla community is huge worldwide as well as in local countries – there are often local user groups which are very well supported often even in small countries such as South Africa. There is an enormous pool of people supporting the product. The forum on the Joomla.org site has over 200 000 members all providing support and input into making Joomla! a better product.

* There are millions of sites worldwide (about 10 Million if you do a guestimate using Google) that runs on Joomla. It is therefore extremely popular and widely used which also means that it will never be difficult to find developers and people to support it.

* Because it is so popular, it also means that by now there have been quite a few books written about Joomla! from various perspectives to assist both the developer as well as the end-user.

3. Some other good reasons to use Joomla!

One of the most attractive features of using Joomla! is the fact that is so very easy to extend its functionality. You can build anything from a brochure website to a full-featured shopping cart or interactive membership site. This is because there are over 3500 add-ons and plugins available to extend its functionality. This ranges from shopping carts, image galleries, video plugins, forums, blogs, project management tools, etc etc

The Joomla templating system also makes it easy to change the look and feel of your site without having to redo the whole site from scratch. You can literally change the whole graphic design/look of the site in a matter of seconds while retaining the content. There are also over 2000 templates, most of them free, available to change the look and feel of your site.

4. But again, why Joomla! Why not Wordpress, for example?

I have to admit, Wordpress is also extremely popular and Wordpress also makes it extremely easy to add new pages. Wordpress also has numerous free templates available and it makes Wordpress an extremely attractive option to build websites quickly and easily but it must always be kept in mind that Wordpress is essentially a blogging platform. Although it also has numerous plugins available to extend its functionality, it just does not have the raw power with regards to its underlying infrastructure to allow it to easily plug in something like a shopping cart, for example.

So what is the catch? It can't be all roses?

Having worked with Joomla! for a couple of years (and before that, with its predecessor, Mambo) I can tell you exactly what the shortcomings are:
1. Joomla's membership capabilities fall far short of what they could be. There is very limited support for various access groups and access levels.

2. Because it is so popular, it attracts a lot of attention and Joomla! sites get hacked – quite often. The only solution for this is to be aware of your server security settings and to upgrade regularly to stay abreast of the latest Joomla! security updates.

3. Joomla! might be a bit top-heavy for smaller sites, although it still remains the tool of choice for even my smaller sites – it does leave room for expansion later without having to upgrade to a different tool or product!

4. Joomla!'s native search engine friendliness in the older versions leave a lot to be desired, although this has received attention in the latest upgrade. Despite this drawback, most of my Joomla! sites perform well in the search engines due to judicious use of various plugins to rectify this shortcoming.

Altogether, Joomla! is an excellent tool to build websites that are easy to create, easy on the eye and easily extendable.

--
Christine Anderssen is the owner of http://www.tm4y.co.za and offers Joomla! Web Design services for small business owners in South Africa. Visit her site for more information on Joomla! as well as easy to follow online Joomla! tutorials.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/entertainment/music/ringtones-and-copyright.html http://www.articletrader.com/entertainment/music/ringtones-and-copyright.html Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0500
The rise of customizable ring tones obviously was facilitated by the technology that can be provided through the Internet. Websites that allow people to download ring tones are common. Going hand in hand with this is the fact that lots of recording companies also got in on the deal by making some of their music available to be used for ring tones and therefore boosting the bottom line of their royalty earnings. The fact is though that piracy does abound and with the use of torrent sites or pirate MP3 download sites it has actually become possible for many people to download practically any type of song and use it as a ring tone.

There are also plenty of tools available on the Internet to allow cell phone owners to do exactly this. Examples of this are so called 'MP3 to Ring tone converters' that can be downloaded from many popular download sites. There are normally disclaimers attached to these utilities ('we do not condone piracy or copyright violations') although whether this will be something that the users of the product will take note of is a different story. Theoretically if you already own the music on CD and just take a snippet of 30 seconds and make your own ring tone, it is not illegal – according to an article written by Engadget.com written in September 2007 (/know-your-rights-is-it-illegal-to-make-my-own-ringtones/). This is due to the latest copyright ruling in Dec 2006 which rules that a mastertone ringtone of less than 30 seconds is not a derivative work and therefore not infringing on the copyright of the original artist. Also, few people (theoretically) have ring tones that are longer than 30 seconds – and frankly, if they have, they should be taken out and shot, or hit over the head by their own cell phone in a sock..

If you want to make a ringtone for your Iphone, you have to pay twice for the song – once to download, and once to use as a ring tone. This has probably more to do with Apple's contract with the music label owners than the actual copyright infringement laws. You can bet your bottom dollar that the music label owners would do anything to wring the last cent out of a company like Apple and there are probably huge swaths of forests sacrificed to the fine print in the Apple Itunes contract with regards to ring tones.

But one could also argue that music label owners are shortsighted in not allowing their music to be used freely as ring tones. There is an argument that allowing the music to be freely used in a 10 second or even 30 second clip allows for greater distribution and awareness of the music itself and could actually be viewed as a free marketing tool. If one looks at the explosion of certain sections of the music industry just because more people got to listen to music that they would otherwise not have been exposed to, once cannot help but think that there is some truth in this statement. .

Be that as it may, if you really are keen to have your own ring tone for your phone, the options today are either to download music and make your own ring tone, which could potentially be illegal if you do not own the music in the first place, or use Apple to make ringtones for your iPhone from the limited database of tunes that are available as ring tones, or if you still have a normal cell phone, to go directly to a ring tone site and just download the latest hits already set up as ring tones directly to your phone, without the hassle.

--
There is a plethora of options available today, but if all this technology and questions about copyright are just too confusing, it might be easier just to do a ringtone download from one of the thousands of sites on the Internet offering that service, such as my site http://www.cellringtones.co.za/za/index.php

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>