Indy Design (indydesign.com) is an English-language website of a web studio and hosting service, known from archived snapshots dating back to December 1998[1]. Its link to the Nizhny Novgorod Internet comes from a Russian-language offer at the internal address /bestofinternet: under the title "Get a free online store!!!" it was registered with the regional counter Counter.nn.ru as number 1036, and in a snapshot from 30 September 2000 it held 331st place in its overall ranking[2], while in the directory of the "Nizhny Novgorod On-Line" portal (nn.ru), captured on 9 January 2001, it was listed in the "Projects: Freebies and making money online" section[4]. Who ran the Russian version, surviving materials do not say. The latest snapshot of the home page taken into account when compiling the survey is dated 4 May 2022[7].

The 1998 site

The earliest surviving snapshot was taken on 12 December 1998. The page was titled "i n d y d e s i g n - Pro Web Design," and its description carried the slogan: "Commitment, knowledge and customer service not only help US beat our competition, but keep YOU ahead of yours…"[1].

The range of services was listed directly in the home page text: website creation, free web hosting, domain hosting for 12 dollars, free domain parking, free banner exchange, and URL redirection[1]. The site was built with frames and warned the visitor that a frame-capable browser, such as Netscape, was needed to view it[1]. The page's keyword list included "site design," "intranet," "shopping mall," "java javascript cgi," and the names of HTML editors of the time — HotDog and FrontPage[1].

The Russian section: "Get a free online store"

What made it into the Nizhny Novgorod registries was not the English-language site itself, but its internal address http://www.indydesign.com/bestofinternet. There are no snapshots of this page itself in the collected material — it is known only from two city catalog entries. In the counter.nn.ru counter it was recorded under the heading "Get a free online store!!!," with the description on the counter's card reading: "Free rental of an online store with an option to buy. The world's best product manufacturers at your service: Seiko, Pierre Cardin, Sony, Philips, Remington, Tefal, Bosch and many others…"[2].

In the nn.ru directory the same address was recorded differently — as "Personal Online Store" with the explanation "How to become the owner of a personal online store"; a catalog check dated 27 July 2000 marked the resource as working, with a rating of 1.00[4]. Both entries — in the counter and in the directory — pointed to the same counter No. 1036, meaning it was one and the same registration[2][4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod ranking

In the counter.nn.ru snapshot from 30 September 2000, the page stands at 331st place in the overall ranking: in the "Counter" column — 438, in the "Rating" column — 2.26, in the "Hits" column — 0[2]. The overall list's page-by-page navigation went up to the range 481–500, so the ranking then included around five hundred sites[2]. Its neighbors on the list were the "Virtual Store 'Nizhny Novgorod'" (329th place), "Literature and Science Fiction" (330th), and the "Stinger home page" (332nd)[2].

In the counter's "Firms (Enterprises)" topic category, the page closed out the first hundred — 100th place, with the category's navigation going up to the range 121–140[3]. Immediately ahead of it in the same category were OAO "Zhelezobetonstroy No. 5" (98th place) and the "Virtual Store 'Nizhny Novgorod'" (99th), while the top line of the page was occupied by OAO "KORUND," the website of a household chemicals maker in Dzerzhinsk[3]. In the nn.ru directory the entry lived in the "Projects: Freebies and making money online" section, alongside resources such as "Earnings on the Internet" and "-Money-"[4].

The archive preserved neither an address nor a phone number with a Nizhny Novgorod code on the domain's own pages: what makes this resource local is only the registration of the Russian-language offer in the two city registries — the counter and the nn.ru portal's catalog. For the general context of the ranking and the method used to analyze its archived cross-sections, see the article Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Parking and sale of the domain

What became of the Russian section, the material does not show: later snapshots in the survey exist only for the domain's home page. By February 2011 it carried a placeholder page from Marchex Sales, Inc. with the single word "web hosting" and legal text: the terms of use were stated to be in effect from 23 September 2010, with disputes referred to the courts of King County, Washington[5].

By October 2016 the domain was already for sale: "The domain indydesign.com is for sale," with an offer to call Afternic.com at +1 781-373-6847 and 855-201-2286[6]. The latest home-page snapshot, taken on 4 May 2022, contains only a technical notice that JavaScript needs to be enabled[7]. According to the 2024 survey data, the domain is parked — there is no longer a standalone site at indydesign.com.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 1998 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru, overall ranking (positions 321-340), 2000 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — counter.nn.ru, "Firms (Enterprises)" category (positions 81-100), 2000 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Projects: Freebies and making money online" section, 2001 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page snapshot, 2022 (archive)