legopttorg.r52.ru was the website of the open joint-stock company "Nizhegorodlegopttorg," a Nizhny Novgorod wholesale depot that traded in workwear and personal protective equipment, wines and spirits, fish products, and fruit[1]. As the company described itself, it was formed in 1957 as a division of "Volgovyatglavsnab," at the time belonging to the state supply system, and thanks to that retained close ties with a number of the largest industrial enterprises of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast[1]. The site lived in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru and was part of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s; the home-page snapshots captured in our sample span the period from August 2001[1] to May 2010[4].

What the company said about itself

All of the site's surviving text is a single "About the Company" page. It laid out the enterprise's history: founding in 1957 within the state supply system, incorporation "with the development of market relations in Russia," and gradual expansion from supplying factories with workwear to a full-line wholesale depot[1]. As the home page put it, at the depot "you can buy almost anything — from fruit to workwear"[1]. The main lines of business named were trade in wines and spirits, sale of fish products and fruit, and sale of workwear and personal protective equipment[1].

A separate paragraph was devoted to the terms of working with customers: the usual form of payment was named as prepayment, regular customers were offered deferred payment, and barter was allowed by agreement[1]. The depot's location was described as advantageous — three hundred meters from Moskovskoye Shosse, a federal highway — with warehouses next to the office where paperwork was handled; the company stated that all the goods it supplied were certified and that it could arrange delivery itself, since it had its own rail spur[1]. The page ended with the claim that "Nizhegorodlegopttorg" was known not only within the Nizhny Novgorod region but far beyond it[1].

What the site looked like

The site was built as simply as possible: all of the surviving text of the home page consists of a title with the company's name and an "About the Company" section, about two thousand characters describing the enterprise[1]. There is no product catalog, no price list, no postal address, and no phone number in the surviving text of the archived snapshots — a buyer was offered only a description of the company and a list of its trade lines[1][3]. No visitor counters are visible in the surviving text either.

In the 2001 and 2003 snapshots, two service captions stood at the bottom of the page — "Coding by Info-Online" and "Hosting by r52.ru"[1][2]; in the 2004 and 2010 snapshots both are already gone, and only a copyright notice remains in the footer[3][4]. The company description itself did not change by a single word over nine years: it matches verbatim across all four snapshots[1][4]. Only the footer changed: in the three earlier snapshots the copyright read "2001"[3], while in the last one, from May 2010, it read "2005"[4]. Judging by that line, the page was last touched around 2005.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our sample not from the Counter.nn.ru rating but from the nn.ru catalog's directory; the description given there almost word for word repeated the paragraph from the home page[1]. The domain does not appear in the surviving counter samples, and we have no data on its traffic. Nor does it appear in the competitive side of the city's online life: the domain is not listed in the results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote for 2004[5]. For how the surviving counter samples were built and who ended up in them, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The last home-page snapshot in our sample is dated May 5, 2010; it still showed the same text with the 2005 copyright[4]. Our data records the web archive's last access to the site on that same date. Later the address legopttorg.r52.ru stopped opening, and today the domain no longer exists. Our data records no trace of a move to another address, so the enterprise's further fate cannot be traced from the site's materials: the web archive's index knows of 28 accesses to the site, while our sample captured four snapshots of the same "About the Company" page.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2010 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)