artec.nnov.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod design studio "Artec," which operated in the early 2000s in Nizhny Novgorod at 26 Alekseyevskaya Street, office 218[1]. In its entry in the nn.ru directory, the studio described itself as follows: "engaged in traditional design work, and also provides services in the field of Internet technologies." In all three surviving snapshots with page content, the studio's director is named as Sergey Nikishenkov[1]. The first surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 19 January 2002[1], and the last snapshot with page content in our sample is 18 November 2003[3]; by November 2005 the address was already serving a hosting-panel service page[4].

What the site looked like

The home page was organized extremely sparsely. A heading reading "Artec::: Design|studio," below it the single substantive section — "Works of the 'Artec' studio" — and a block titled "Our contact details"[1]. There is no news, no price list, and no order form in the surviving text: in the snapshots the site is a business card with a portfolio, and nothing more.

The contact details were given in a single line. As the home page stated, "Nizhny Novgorod, 26 Alekseyevskaya St., office 218. Phone: 35-04-64," followed by an email address and the signature "Studio director: Nikishenkov Sergey"[1]. The email address changed over the year: in January 2002 the page listed info@artec.ru[1], while by November of the same year it was info@artec.nnov.ru — that is, mail had moved to the site's own domain[2].

Portfolio: who commissioned work

In the January 2002 snapshot the list of works ran as a single unbroken list: the computer company "OnLine," the news agency "IF-Region," the companies "Avtoservistsentr," "Billora," "Esparto," "NOLA," "Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz (design)," the company "Tekhnodetal," ZAO "Volganeftekhimmontazh," and the "Vremya GSM" chain of stores[1].

By November 2002 the same list had been split by year. The "2001" section retained the earlier clients (minus "Tekhnodetal"), while a new "2002" section added the company "Akvarium-Terra" and the work "Population census in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[2]. A year later the census line had dropped out of the list, while the 2002 section had gained "Representative office of Mazda in Nizhny Novgorod" and NPO "Diagnosticheskiye Sistemy"[3]. Otherwise the 2003 snapshot is unchanged from the year before.

The Nizhny Novgorod connection is visible right in the list: "Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz," "Representative office of Mazda in Nizhny Novgorod," "Population census in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[1][2][3]. About the other names — "Billora," "Esparto," "NOLA," "Akvarium-Terra," "Tekhnodetal" — the surviving text tells us nothing beyond the name itself: neither city nor line of business. The type of work is also left unexplained almost everywhere on the page: the only clarification given is next to "Nizhegorodskaya Sotovaya Svyaz" — "(design)"[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The studio's domain was in the Nizhny Novgorod nnov.ru zone, and the site's entry sat in the directory of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet server nn.ru — in the category "Firms (Enterprises): Advertising: Web design studios," alongside other local web studios; that is how the entry became known to our survey. In the directory snapshot dated by the page itself to 25 July 2002, the note against the studio reads "Rating: none" — the site had no counter. Correspondingly, artec.nnov.ru does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating that underlie the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. Nor is the site listed in the final voting table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day[5].

There are no visitor-count or vote figures for artec.nnov.ru in the materials available to us. The only thing the site left behind is a list of its own works for 2001-2002 — that is, the list of clients of a Nizhny Novgorod design studio, as kept by the studio itself[2][3].

How it closed

There are no snapshots between 18 November 2003 and 8 November 2005 in our sample. The snapshot from 8 November 2005 shows not the site itself but a standard hosting-panel stub page: a "Default PLESK Page" explaining that hosting for the domain has not been configured, or that no such domain is registered in the panel[4]. That is, sometime between the end of 2003 and the end of 2005 the site disappeared from its hosting.

The studio's subsequent fate cannot be traced in the materials available to us: as of this survey the domain artec.nnov.ru is dead, and no redirect to a new address appears in the archived snapshots.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, November 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)