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In 1997, I was in university in
London, UK studying Business HND, the real reason I was there was to study
the ladies and rave as much as I can. Tupac influenced my life in many
ways, the lyrics made so much sense, I could relate to tunes like Dear
Mama... every word fitted my life! I was
 always
a Tupac fan but never took it really
seriously till I met a guy called Taz.
We became really good friends
and shared the same interests... we always used to crack
jokes about making millions and taking over...
Every computer lecture, we would get
on the pc's and surf the net, usually checking out tupac.com and
hitemup.com. During one lecture, we were talking with someone called Akif
who suggested we make a site about Tupac, we all went along with the idea
and decided to meet up later that day. I was the main webmaster but never
dealt with a site in my life, I never knew where to start or what to do,
so I got onto geocities and after a few hours, I managed to add one
picture and some text underneath it! We called it Hip Hop Legends! We were
completely taken back by the complications of it all and it was a long and
slow process.
A few months went by... Taz & Akif
soon lost interest, I was drawn into the idea of being able to make a site
which millions of people can view, its a form of mass communication, power
and fame. I stayed back late nights at uni trying to better the site, I
had never done a course in this or ever been taught by anyone! Dedication,
investing my time and effort slowly allowed me to learn more and more, I
set up a simple chat room dedicated to Tupac on the site which was
becoming quite popular, I remember seeing my early stats and was shocked
that over 1000 people had hit my site! I later learnt about hosting and
buying domain names...
Later that year, I invested in a new
domain name, tupacfans.net was born! this was my first ever tupac site
with a proper name, I added information about him,
picture galleries, the tupac chat etc... by now my knowledge of building
sites was getting better and better, I was even able to add a e-mail
service for my visitors! I have added a screen shot of the site on the
right... tupacfans.net was respected and linked by many other tupac sites.
As time went by and more content was added, this site went on to become
one of the most popular tupac sites on the internet, I was getting close
to one million hits a month and the site was costing me £45 a month to
run, this was all funded by me!
A year went by and the hits were
getting more and more... as a student, the money it was costing me was now
getting out of hand, but I struggled to make it and keep the site up!
I then received a strange letter from
the Estate of Tupac Shakur addressed to me from lawyers appointed by Afeni
Shakur to have the site taken down, it stated that the images on our site
are owned but the Shakur Estate and we are not allowed to display them, we
were told to take the lyrics down and all material related to Tupac Shakur!
I replied stating that this is a non-profit website dedicated to Tupac for
the fans, a place for them to come and get information about him, after a
few e-mail's back and forth, it was clear that they are not backing down
and will prosecute me unless I remove the site from the internet! I was
shocked by this but at the same time, I was happy in a weird way, the fact
that Afeni Shakur took notice of my site was a good thing, even though the
news was bad... after a few days of thought, I decided to keep the site on
the net and simply remove the vast picture gallery and lyrics we
displayed. I e-mailed them back stating that I have removed this material
and actually want to work with the Shakur Estate and Afeni Shakur in
helping to keep the Tupac memory alive, the fans need a place to go and
get information as well as talk amongst themselves about their feeling
towards him. I never received a reply.
Another year went by... the site was
now using over 80gb of bandwidth a month and I went through some financial
challenges that forced my host to close the site unless I can come up with
an massive amount of money... I was unable to do this and they removed the
site. This fu**ed me off and I was unable to do anything! It was now out
of my hands... I kept my tupac chat room and added it to a free hosted
server.
I used my skills that I learned from
the Tupac site to make many other sites, I became better and better and my
sites went on to win awards! I gained recognition very quickly... one of
my sites is now the UK's biggest in its industry!
Now I understand what is needed to
maintain a site, money! I now have sponsors and adverts on the site that
allow the site to pay for itself! so the birth of MyTupacSite.com is here!
I'am the webmaster behind the world famous TupacFans.net... and this is my
new tupac site... what better name then MyTupacSite.com... a new and
improved version... I will be adding all the material that was featured on
TupacFans.net slowly but surely! This site isn't going anywhere, it is
already paying for itself, I always kept my Tupac Chat and it has always
been the busiest Tupac Chat on the net... its featured on some massive
sites like tupac.com etc
We are here to stay, so bookmark us,
we are also offering a e-mail service which allows you to get
yourname@mytupacsite.com, support the cause and join
that! promote the site and lets work together to make this site... one of
the world's number one Tupac site's again...
I wish Afeni Shakur all the best with her efforts in
keeping the memory alive, it takes true dedication to feel what I feel
towards tupac's gifts... whether he is alive or dead, may his memories
live on, he shall live, as long as we keep him alive... bless - AJ
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