gaynn.narod.ru — a site called "Blue Nizhny" ("Голубой Нижний"), listed in the nn.ru catalog under the /rub/ section with the description "a site for Nizhny Novgorod gays (news of Nizhny Novgorod gay life, chat, bulletin board, polls, guestbook)"[1]. It was hosted on the free hosting service narod.ru; the earliest surviving snapshot is dated September 29, 2001[1], and the last one, May 12, 2017[3].

What the site looked like and what it offered

In 2001 the home page bore the title "Gay Nizhny Novgorod" and offered the visitor links to sections: "BULLETIN BOARD", "BOOK OF TOADS AND SUGGESTIONS", "MAIL", "REST!", "CHAT" — while the home page itself, as it stated, was "UNDER RECONSTRUCTION", and "THE REST ARE WORKING"[1].

By November 2002 the set of sections had changed to "CHAT", "FORUM", "GUESTBOOK", "MAIL" and "POLL RESULTS". The page listed two site addresses: www.gaynn.narod.ru and pokrovka.az.ru[2]. The same page shows a visitor counter with a giveaway typical of the era: as the home page put it, "Neither the 5000th nor the 5100th visitor showed up. Fine, I'm persistent :) The 10,000th gets 500 rubles in cash. Learn to take screenshots"[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the Counter.nn.ru catalog — or rather, in the related nn.ru catalog, under the /rub/ section[1]. No votes for it are recorded in the surviving counter samples, and the material contains no data on participation in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day — the site's trace in the overall picture of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet is confirmed, per the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, only by the fact of its presence in the catalog, not by its position in the ranking.

How it closed

According to available data, the domain existed from 2001 to 2017[1][3]. The web archive records a redirect of the domain to narod.yandex.ru in 2003. The last snapshot, from May 12, 2017, shows a page with entirely different content — the title "Penis Enlargement, Strong Potency and Erection", with no trace whatsoever of the former Nizhny Novgorod site[3], indicating that the domain passed to a third-party owner after the narod.ru page of "Blue Nizhny" ceased operating.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2017 (archive)