center-pfo.ru is the website of the Nizhny Novgorod Information System «Center» (OOO «IS Center»), a portal on real estate, construction, and technology that operated from 2002[1]. The system's head office was located in Nizhny Novgorod: «OOO "IS Center"; Gagarin Ave., 6, office "Center", tel. 30-66-48», director Sergei Olegovich Potapov — as the home page reported[1]. The nn.ru site directory described the resource as «the website of the Information System Center, the largest realtor information system in the Volga Federal District», and also as the website of the Union of Entrepreneurial Organizations of Russia in the Volga Federal District and the Nizhny Novgorod Guild of Realtors[2]. In the summer of 2004 the portal moved to the domain nmls.ru[3].

What the portal looked like

In a snapshot from June 1, 2003, the home page opened with the line «CENTER-PFO.RU a portal on real estate, construction, and technology» and its own statistics counters: «Visitors 28532(32) Listings 23061 Guestbook entries 22 Updated 01.06.03»[1]. The menu consisted of the sections «Home», «News», «Polls», «Advertising on the server», «Guestbook», «Subscription», «Legal consultations», «Cities», «City maps», and «Forums»[1]. Databases were maintained for eleven cities: Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Ivanovo, Ufa, Izhevsk, Orenburg, Kazan, Volgograd, Ulyanovsk, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok[1].

The news feed was professional rather than local: announcements about the opening of the Volgograd database and the connection of the Kazan database, congratulations to real estate agencies, and notices of training courses. Thus, for March 13, 2003, at the Nizhny Novgorod Guild of Realtors, at 45a Rozhdestvenskaya Street, a seminar was announced on the case law of the Federal Arbitration Court of the Volga-Vyatka District concerning real estate transactions; inquiries were taken at telephone (8312) 39-74-04[1]. By the spring of 2004 the home page listed «Apartments 15389» and an update date of 30.03.2004, the sections «Statistics», «Articles», and «Consultations» had appeared, and the list of cities had expanded to include Kirov, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, and Stavropol[4].

Network of representative offices

The portal was a showcase of an interregional subscriber network. The 2003 home page stated: «Total number of subscribers: more than 400», with more than 100 subscribers in Nizhny Novgorod, more than 200 in Samara, more than 20 in Ufa, and more than 10 each in Ivanovo and Izhevsk[1]. Each city had its own listed phone number and director: Samara — (8462) 32-61-87, Ivanovo — (0932) 37-61-57, Ufa — (3472) 21-71-66, Izhevsk — Lenin Street, 30, office 25, Kazan — 2nd Garazhnaya Street, 3, Orenburg — (3532) 64-47-96[1]. At the same Nizhny Novgorod address as «IS Center» was listed the company WebCentre, which was engaged in the development, hosting, and maintenance of websites[1]. A separate block explained to the reader the composition of the Volga Federal District and led to lists of official websites and representative offices in the district[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed in the «Firms (Enterprises): Real Estate» section with a rating of 202 — next to «Metr.Ru» (1203), the interagency regional realtor information server MORIS (385), and the real estate agency «Triumph-Realty» (341)[2]. The home page carried the counter Counter.nn.ru under number 3066, together with Rambler Top100, SpyLog, top.mail.ru, and the Samara samaratop.ru — a set typical of a commercial regional website of the period[1]. In the voting results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, no votes for it are recorded in our data[5]. The general context of the era is covered in the articles Nizhny Novgorod Internet and Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Move to nmls.ru and the domain's fate

On March 29, 2004, the portal was still being updated[4], and in a snapshot from June 11, 2004, only one line remained of it: «we have moved to NMLS.RU»[3]. The same line stood in place of the home page a year and a half later, in a snapshot from November 25, 2005[6].

After that the domain lived a life of its own. In August 2007 it hosted a page of the Nizhny Novgorod internet company «Shtrikh» with the phone number 8 (831) 2410003, offering website development and promotion and multimedia presentations; among its projects were named nmls.ru and familynews.ru, and among its works — karnaval.nn.ru, sormlib.nnov.ru, esparto-glass.nnov.ru[7]. In December 2014, the address center-pfo.ru served technical documentation «API: Real Estate Database» with examples of requests to api.nmls.ru and a field reference — idObject, idAgency, geoSity, objAreaS, priceRUB, and others[8]. The last snapshot in the web archive is dated April 1, 2022, and shows a registrar page: «The registration period for the domain center-pfo.ru has expired»[9].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru site directory, «Firms (Enterprises): Real Estate» section, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (relocation notice) (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting results, 2004 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Home page, 2014 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Domain page, 2022 (archive)