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I began 29th September 2005 as I begin most days. Being in the business of hosting UGPulse.com, I often check out other Ugandan sites to make sure our readers are not totally left out of the loop with anything that is going on, as well as to check out new ideas and approaches to web development- something all of us in the business do.
UGPulse Promo
It may come as a surprise that of the sites I visit, as elementary technology-wise as the web site is, I have always seen musicuganda.com as a standard to follow. That is until recently, when I started feeling that something was wrong on their site.
Earlier this summer, in May 2005, I started feeling that musicuganda.com was losing momentum. This was not too long after I had been exchanging emails with the man behind the website, one Paul Mwandha.
With my two-month-old site, I had contacted Paul to ask him to partner with me and help run UGPulse's Entertainment channel. I had contacted a good number of Ugandan websites looking for different partnerships. Apart from New Vision who eventually decided that any partnership would be against their business interests, Paul was the only one to respond to my emails.
We began exchanging ideas and he told me that he had begun musicuganda.com in the exact same way as I was starting UGPulse.com. He told me of the day he and his followers had gone out to celebrate after achieving 300 hits in one day (they were now doing thousands of hits per hour). The beginning was rough, he said, but things were beginning to fall into place. He encouraged me telling me that, having worked for America OnLine, my advantage was that I had some work experience where he had had none.
Paul Mwandha alerted me that he had already seen my site and put it on his "Links of the Day" earlier on towards the end of April 2005. True enough, according to our site logs we were getting a lot of traffic from musicuganda.com at this time. He said he could not partner with me immediately because the work on the site had become overwhelming because of his method of publishing as well as from wearing too many hats- something I can totally understand. He was busy reading up on new technologies so that he could redo his entire site which, I think it is safe to say, he began almost as one would with a personal website. The least he could do for me, he said, was to once again put me on his "Links of the Day."
And so he did in May 2005 and, although September 2005 just made the rank of our busiest month to date, it took a lot of work to finally beat our statistical records set in May 2005 when a lot of our traffic emanated from musicuganda.com.
So I watched musicuganda.com slow down this summer but in the back of my mind I new that Paul was busy updating his site to take it to a new level. This surely was the reason why the site had lost momentum. He did not return any more of my persistent emails and so I figured, that like New Vision, he probably began to see me as competition. But just in case he was still willing to partner with me, I waited for him to update the technology of his site first before I would begin harassing him again.
Little did I know of the battle he was facing.
When I logged on to musicuganda.com yesterday morning, it was like someone had just stabbed me in my stomach. I had to re read and re read the message at the opening page of the site.
There was his photo, one that many of us knew too well, with a red line across it and the word "DECEASED".
This man was too young to be taken from us. His work was not yet done.
To honor him, I pray that musicuganda.com has been put into responsible hands. To the best of my knowledge he was the engine to the website.
Rest in Peace, Paul. Rest in Peace.
Related Links:
musicuganda.com
Earlier article pages at musicuganda.com
Paul celebrates a milestone and talks about how he began musicuganda.com.
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