Ummah

The Islamic website Ummah.com, formerly the Islamic Gateway, is best known for the Ummah Forum, a large English Muslim internet forum. Ummah.com is based in the UK, as are the majority of its voluntary contributors and active forum users. It is fully owned by Waha Media Limited, and is financed entirely through donations.

Islamic Gateway

The Islamic Gateway, as Ummah.com was then called, was founded in 1996 by a high school student with a shared hosting account from the now-defunct UK-based web host Virtual-PC. By posting the FTP username and password for their hosting account on several Muslim mailing lists, the Islamic Gateway encouraged users to put their own Islamic content online, effectively providing free web hosting without adverts. This proved extremely popular, and the Islamic Gateway soon became a focal point for Islamic content online.

The website's administrators then purchased their own dedicated server. This enabled them to provide separate user accounts for each website they hosted.

Rebranding as Ummah.com

After obtaining the Ummah.com domain name in late 2001, Waha Media Limited, a not-for-profit company formed by the administrators of the Islamic Gateway, decided to rebrand the site as Ummah.com. A new homepage was designed from scratch, making use of a bespoke content management system programmed using PHP and mySQL.

Moving forwards

In February 2009 the home page of Ummah.com was renewed with the assistance of MusPages.com, the new homepage sought to bring together the combined efforts of the Muslim Community and enhance the Ummah.com website as a uniquely diverse media brand. The site has continued to grow, reaching out to an even greater audience

http://www.ummah.net/