ni.nn.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod trading firm "NizhegorodStroyInstrument" ("Nizhny Novgorod Construction Tools"), which operated in the nn.ru zone from the early 2000s. The firm sold metal-cutting, locksmith, measuring and abrasive tools and was located in Nizhny Novgorod at 59 Kuybysheva Street; the homepage listed the phone number (8312) 41-76-66, the phone/fax (8312) 43-25-10 and the email address ni@nn.ru[1]. The earliest snapshot of the site that we examined is dated 13 February 2003[1], and the latest is dated 27 January 2008[4].

A one-page business card: 2003–2006

In its first years the site consisted of a single page with no menu or sections. As the homepage stated, the firm was the "Officail representative in the Volga federal district of the Novosibirsk tool plant, the Bogotol tool plant, the "Tomsk Instrument" plant, the Urals abrasive plants, the "Kalibr" plant" — the spelling and typos are preserved as they appear in the snapshot[1]. Below that was a line with the city, street, two phone numbers and a mailbox in the nn.ru domain[1].

The snapshots from February 2003, September 2004 and April 2006 match word for word: over more than three years the text of the homepage did not change by a single character[2][3]. The page was encoded in KOI8-R, typical for Nizhny Novgorod sites of that era.

Online shop: 2008

By January 2008 the same address hosted a full-fledged wholesale shop. The menu listed the sections "Home", "News", "Product catalog", "My orders", "Orders", "Cart", "Buyer profiles", "User settings", "Download" and "About the company"; alongside these were a site search, a login form with a "Remember me on this computer" checkbox, "Forgot your password?" and "Registration" links, and the text "Your cart is empty"[4]. Pagination at the bottom counted "1 - 20 of 11118" across eleven pages[4].

The homepage showcase displayed two dozen items with unit of measure and manufacturer: R6M5 drill bits per GOST 886-77, machine-hand and nut taps, end mills and cut-off mills, files marked "LIZ", grinding wheels marked "Luga" and "VAZ", "SITOMO" wrenches, an explosion-proof box wrench made of D-16 alloy, a GI-100M dial depth gauge (KrIN), an IE-1520E 600 W impact electric drill (KZMI), SDS Plus drill bits and flat chisels[4]. The footer carried the lines "Powered by 1C-Bitrix: Site Management" and "© Konstanta, 2007", and stated that the site's administrator was Vladimir Kosolapov of OOO Konstanta[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the directory of the nn.ru portal — in the branch "Firms (Enterprises) → Equipment — manufacture, sale, installation, service → Tools and construction"[6]. The listing card showed the value of the Counter.nn.ru counter, and the link from it led to the counter page with the number 10503[6].

These listing cards show the growth in visits: in the snapshot of the category page from 17 September 2003 the site had "Rating: 52"[5], while in the snapshot from 26 November of the same year it had "Rating: 94"[6]. That was a notable figure for the category: of the twenty-five firms listed on the November page, the counter showed a number for only eight of them, and 94 was the third-highest result after 263 and 117[6]. More on how this slice of data works — in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the surviving results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, ni.nn.ru does not appear: among the table's 220 rows, this address is absent[7]. The site was not a contest entry but a working tool of a trading firm — typical of the business layer that made up much of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s.

How it closed

After January 2008, no substantive snapshots of the site appear in the sample we examined: the last of them shows a functioning shop with a 2007 copyright notice[4]. As of the writing of this article, the domain ni.nn.ru no longer exists, and neither the shop nor the earlier business-card page opens at that address. What remains of the site is what the web archive managed to record: one line about representing five tool plants, an address on Kuybysheva Street, and a catalog that grew over five years to a five-digit number of items.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2008 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Tools and construction" category, September 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, "Tools and construction" category, November 2003 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)