dialog.r52.ru was the website of ZAO "Firma 'Dialog-Autoservice'" (Диалог-Автосервис), a Nizhny Novgorod car-service company that called itself the "Nizhny Novgorod representative of Volvo"[1]. The site ran in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru and was hosted there as well: the footer of the home page carried the line "Hosting r52.ru"[1]. The copyright mark on the page referred to 2001[1]; the first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated 28 September 2001, and the last, 9 March 2005[2]. Of the surviving snapshots, only the 2002 one has any content: by the end of 2004 the site had already been replaced by the hosting provider's stub page[3].
What was on the site
The home page opened with the banner "DIALOG-AUTOSERVICE. NIZHNY NOVGOROD REPRESENTATIVE OF VOLVO" and a short menu of six items: "About the company," "News," "Sale of 'Volvo' cars," "Our services," "Cooperation," "Contacts"[1]. The rest of the home page was taken up by the "About the company" section — in effect a business card for the firm, set as a single screen of text.
As the home page reported, the firm "has operated in the car-service market since 1998, and specializes in the maintenance and repair of 'Volvo' cars, as well as 'Audi' and 'VW'"[1]. It described its own status this way: "The firm is the official regional service representative of one of Russia's largest 'Volvo' dealers — the Kuntsevo Technical Center (Moscow)"[1]. It also reported that its leading specialists had trained at the "Volvo" training center, and that the work used "only the newest licensed proprietary software from 'Volvo' and V.A.G."[1].
The list of services on the home page ran as a single block: repairs of any complexity "from oil changes to engine power-unit replacement," electrical work, complex body repair, servicing of new cars under warranty[1]. The text closed with a direct appeal to the visitor: "If you want quality service with a guarantee of replacement for defective parts — come to our firm"[1]. There was no address or phone number on the home page: contact details lived on a separate page, and it has not survived in the web archive. No visitor counters are visible on the home page either. The site credited its developer in the footer with a single line — "Coding by Info-online"[1].
Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet
The site belongs to the layer of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet made up of two-or-three-page corporate business cards: one firm, one description of services, a contacts page. In our census the domain came in through the directory of the nn.ru catalogue — the selection process is described in the article Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. In the catalogue the firm was represented by the same text about its status as regional service representative of "Kuntsevo" that stood on the home page itself[1].
In the final voting table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, the domain does not appear[4]. Nor does it appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter that we hold — meaning the site either did not take part in the public race for traffic on the Nizhny Novgorod web, or at least no trace of such participation remains.
How it closed
The site's date of death can be pinned down unusually precisely. The snapshot from 29 November 2004 no longer shows the firm's page but a service message from the hosting provider: "The domain name www.dialog.r52.ru points to this IP address, but no virtual host is configured" — signed "Administration of R52.RU"[3]. The same message appears in the last surviving snapshot, from 9 March 2005[5]. This means the domain was still pointing to the r52.ru servers, but the site itself was no longer hosted there: the firm had not renewed the hosting, and the DNS record kept living on by inertia for a while.
Later the domain itself disappeared: according to our census, dialog.r52.ru no longer responds. What became of the firm cannot be judged from the archived snapshots — the site died before it left so much as a line about it in its "News" section.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Snapshots of dialog.r52.ru in the web archive (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)