By Wayne Woods

Wayne, Pennsylvania – Advanced Internet, a division of Advanced Telecom Services, announces introduction of MonsterTones.com—a new web site that specializes in delivering MP3 ringtones, polyphonic ringtones, and wallpapers to cellular phones.

MP3 ringtones, newest option in ringtone industry, are usually ordered from a web site and then delivered via a WAP push link to cell phone. The difference is in sound that is made by cell phone when a call is received.

MonsterTones’s Bob Bentz explained that with MP3 ringtones, an actual voice or song with lyrics plays on cell phone. This is an upgrade from polyphonic ringtones that sound like an orchestra playing song or older monophonic ringtones that sound like a pianist playing with one finger.

What does it take for small and home-based businesses to get started with e-commerce? My goal is to answer this question and to give you information that allows you to get started with selling your products and services on Internet.

The benefits of e-commerce are plentiful; most important ones being: increasing sales revenues while expanding a company’s customer base and offering services to allow customers to shop at their convenience around clock and independent of location.

BASIC INGREDIENTS

An e-commerce website should consist of a website with at least following components:

- Product catalog - Shopping cart - Shipping and handling options - Online payment processing

In order to obtain these basic ingredients, following technical requirements have to be met: - Server disk space. E-commerce software contains an online store in format of a website. In order for this website to be available on Internet, it has to be stored on harddisk of a server computer that is constantly connected to Internet. - Registered domain name. Once E-commerce software is stored on server’s harddisk, it still needs to be made accessible for customers using an Internet address. For this, a domain name needs to be registered, e.g. http://www.yourname.com. - Online database. E-commerce software stores its data in a database. For this reason, an online database has to be available on server computer. - PHP script preprocessor. An e-commerce website contains dynamic webpages. To make this reliable and compatible across all Internet browsers, PHP server-side scripting language is used for making webpages dynamic and for accessing online database. - FTP access. This is needed to upload and install e-commerce software from ones local computer to harddisk of server computer. - Telnet server access. Using Telnet, you can access files on server’s harddisk. - SSL certificate. A Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate should be installed and configured on server computer for securing transfer of credit card information.

Most owners and employees in small and home-based businesses get discouraged about using e-commerce, because they don’t have sufficient knowledge regarding how to meet these technical requirements. This is not necessary. There are several Internet hosting companies available that offer e-commerce hosting packages that meet all of these technical requirements. They will configure and maintain an Internet server computer (or part of it) for you to use.

PERSONAL SKILLS