tourclub.nn.ru was the website of the public organization "Nizhny Novgorod Tourist Club," which since 2003 had called itself, on its own home page, the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Tourist Club[1][2]. The club led kayaking and hiking trips across Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Crimea and Russia, and organized children's and family recreation[5]. The site's title started right with the words "Nizhny Novgorod," and at the bottom of the page stood a 2001 copyright line with the organization's full name[2]. The surviving snapshots of the home page span the period from January 7, 2002 to February 8, 2005[1][4].

The home page: an eight-line poem instead of a storefront

Of the site, almost nothing survives in the web archive except the front page, and all four of its snapshots — 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 — carry the same content. Instead of a description of services, a price list or a schedule of departures, visitors were greeted by an eight-line invitational poem. As the home page put it, the sheet was addressed to those "who cannot sit at home, who dream of the road in their sleep"[1]. The poem went on to address an office worker with a television at his feet and a mobile phone in his hands, and closed with an invitation to relax on the club's routes[1].

The preserved text of the home page contains no postal address, no phone number, and no schedule of hikes: the whole page rested on the verse, the invitation, and the copyright line[3]. The site's inner sections — if they existed — are not preserved in the available snapshots, so it is impossible to judge from the archive how the club recruited groups or what exactly it offered.

A change of signage, and the developer

The only discernible change over the site's three years of life is a rewritten title. In January 2002 the page was titled simply "Nizhegorodsky Turistsky Klub" (Nizhny Novgorod Tourist Club)[1]. By February 2003 the title had turned into the formula "Nizhny Novgorod:: Nizhegorodsky Oblastnoy Turistsky Klub (Nizhny Novgorod Regional Tourist Club):: Active Recreation" — with the city, the full name, and the theme, that is, reworked for directories and search engines[2]. At the same time a credit appeared in the signature: "Developed by 'Graff'," and from the June 3, 2004 snapshot on — "Developed by the company 'Graff'"[2][3][7]. Nothing else on the home page changed: the 2004 and 2005 snapshots match word for word[4]. Who stood behind that credit is clear from the portfolio of Nizhny Novgorod web developer Dmitry Sharynin: the club's site is listed there as his work, alongside the first version of the "Graff" studio's own site[7]. The same portfolio also mentions "version 2.0" of the club's site, built in 2006 on AmiroCMS — meaning the site was redone even after the last snapshot preserved in the web archive[7].

Its place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the nn.ru directory, in the section "Firms — Tourism, hotels, boarding houses — Travel agencies," with a description the club had written for itself: active recreation by kayak and on foot, organizing hiking trips, children's and family recreation[5]. The section ranked its entries by the Counter.nn.ru indicator, and in that list the club stood twelfth out of eighteen with a rating of 103 — against 1440 and 753 for the top two lines and 7 for the bottom one[5]. The link led to counter number 2185, while the neighboring travel agency "Kruiz" ("Cruise") in the list had number 10812[5]. The club's neighbors in the category were the Nizhny Novgorod travel firms "Magazin Goryashchikh Putyovok" ("Hot Deals Shop"), "Moskva-Tur-Nizhny Novgorod," "Rosinka," "Galateya," "Fora-Tur" and "Ekspress"[5]. How this indicator related to the overall picture given by the counter is examined 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, the tourist club is not listed: among the tourism-related entrants named there are the agency "Rosinka" and the firm "Nord," but the Nizhny Novgorod Tourist Club is absent from the list[6]. No votes for it are recorded in our data.

How it ended

The last preserved snapshot of the home page is dated February 8, 2005; there are no later copies of the home page in our sample[4]. The directory entry, however, outlived the site itself: the club's description and its rating of 103 still stand in the nn.ru directory, with a link to the former address[5]. In the history of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, the club remained a business-card page made by an outside studio: of its three years' presence online, what survives is a line in a directory, the number 103 on a counter, and an eight-line poem on the home page.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  5. НН.РУ — nn.ru directory, «Travel agencies» section (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)
  7. sharynin.ru — Projects and experience — Dmitry Sharynin