frunze.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod M. V. Frunze Plant, operating in the first half of the 2000s on the platform of the Nizhny Novgorod provider R52.ru. The enterprise introduced itself with the line "Manufacture of modern control and measuring instruments," placed at the very top of the home page[1]. The site was not a showcase but a working sales tool: the only news item preserved on the home page was dated August 23, 2001, and, as the home page stated, read: "The Nizhny Novgorod M. V. Frunze Plant is seeking partners to sell its products: electric meters, consumer goods"[1].

How the site was organized

The surviving copy of the home page from August 2002 shows a simple structure of six sections, each with a short explanatory caption. "About the plant" promised a story "about the plant, its people, prospects and directions of the plant's further development"; "Our achievements" covered diplomas and other awards received; "Products" listed the range of instruments manufactured by the plant. Next came "Price list," "Order" ("here you can fill out an order form for the instruments you need"), and "Contacts" — phone numbers and email addresses of the plant's managers and specialists[1].

The set of sections reveals the site's purpose: a price list, an order form, and direct contacts of specialists make this a factory sales page addressed to the wholesale buyer of instruments, not to the casual visitor. Aside from the order form, the home page offered no interactivity whatsoever.

A curious detail in the surviving text: below the menu, the same placeholder line repeats several times in a row — "About the history of the plant, its people, prospects and directions of the plant's further development..."[1]. This is an unfilled announcement template: blocks meant for future news items were left with sample text that was never replaced. By August 2002 the only real news on the site remained the year-old announcement about seeking partners.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site lived in the third-level zone r52.ru — on the hosting of the eponymous Nizhny Novgorod provider. Its affiliation is also confirmed by the top line of the page, where, next to the "main" link, stood links to the host's services: "Coding," "Info-online," "Hosting," and r52.ru itself[1]. The provider's header sat directly above the client's content: the plant's site had no second-level domain of its own.

The plant's site did not become a notable name of the Nizhny Novgorod web. Its address does not appear in the surviving results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[3]; nor is it recorded in the samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating that we have preserved — see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. In the census of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, the site is known through the nn.ru catalog's directory, where it was listed with the same description that stood on the home page — "Manufacture of modern control and measuring instruments."

How it closed

Between 2002 and 2005 the site disappeared from its hosting without leaving a farewell page. The snapshot from April 17, 2005 is no longer the plant's site but the provider's service stub: "The domain name www.frunze.r52.ru points to this IP address, but no virtual host is configured," with a suggestion to write to the administration if the visitor believed this to be wrong, and the signature "R52.RU Administration"[2]. That is, the third-level name was still registered to the plant, while the site's own files had already been removed from the server.

The last snapshot in the web archive is dated April 17, 2005[2]; according to our census data, the address no longer responds. The plant's internet presence under the name frunze.r52.ru ended on this stub, and all that remains of it is a six-item menu, an announcement seeking partners, and an unfilled news template.

Sources

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