stab.r52.ru — the website of Nizhny Novgorod closed joint-stock company "STAB", which installed industrial concrete and polymer floors and did roofing and finishing work. The home page called the company "the largest company on the Nizhny Novgorod construction services market," gave the contact phone number +7 (8312) 44-33-01, and listed work done for OAO "GAZ" and the Bor Glassworks[1]. The site ran on r52.ru hosting; its news feed dates the company's entry onto the web to autumn 2000, and the surviving snapshots of the home page span 2001–2004 and capture two different versions of the design[1][3].

First version: 2000–2001

An early snapshot of the home page, taken in August 2001, shows a site with a six-item menu: "About the Company," "Services," "Technologies," "Projects," "Partners," "News." The site's subtitle was "modern construction technologies." As the home page put it, "We welcome you to the official website of ZAO 'STAB', the largest company on the Nizhny Novgorod construction services market"[1].

The company kept its own web history right in the news feed. An entry dated September 25, 2000 announced that "the process of creating our representation on the Internet has begun," and an entry dated October 31, 2000 announced the opening of the address www.stab.ru: "The official Internet representation of the company STAB is open!" Yet the surviving archived snapshots relate to the address in the r52.ru zone, and the footer carried the copyright "© 2000 ZAO 'STAB'," the email info@stab.ru, the design credit "Designed by Serg Masharov," and the line "hosting r52.ru"[1].

Sites and announcements from the technical department

The news feed of the first version of the site effectively served as a portfolio section: each entry described a specific site with the scope of work done. On June 30, 2000 — installation of a fused-membrane roof on a vegetable storage facility of the OPKh "Zarechnoye" experimental farm, 5,400 m². On August 7, 2000 — concrete floors laid by the vacuum-dewatering "TREMIX" method in the "Ataman" automobile production shop at OAO "GAZ," 2,000 m². On August 23, 2000 — a finishing polymer coating (self-leveling floor) in the polished-glass shop of OAO Bor Glassworks, 15,000 m²[1].

A later entry dated July 10 (the year is not given on the page itself, but in the feed it appears above entries from March 8 and January 1, 2001) noted the technology's move beyond the industrial site: concrete floors using the "Swedish TREMIX vacuum-dewatering technology" were laid at the "Na Taganke" auto repair shop — "the first demonstration site of non-industrial purpose" — with the address given as "Taganskaya St., 'Na Taganke' auto repair shop"[1].

A separate block on the home page carried an announcement from the technical department seeking business partners. The company was interested in contractors with the technology and experience to install 10–25 mm floors on an asphalt-concrete base for self-leveling floors or for impregnation with hardening compounds, suppliers of pigments and impregnations resistant to use in magnesite (xylolite) floors, and equipment for installing skirting boards made of magnesite compound. Inquiries were to be directed to chief engineer Alexander Nikolayevich Smirnov at +7 (8312) 44-33-01[1].

Second version: 2002–2004

By March 2003 the site had been completely redone. Nothing remained of the former text-based home page with its news feed: the snapshot preserves only the heading "STAB — Modern Construction Technologies," a "Русский / English" language switcher, and the footer "Copyright ©2002 'Stab'. Design by R52.RU. Hosting r52.ru"[2]. Both the design credit (a hosting provider's studio instead of a private designer) and the language coverage changed — the site gained an English version. The archive failed to capture the content of the new home page — the snapshot has neither menu nor text.

A snapshot from June 9, 2004 shows the same page with the same 2002 copyright, but now without the hosting line[3]. This is the last surviving snapshot of the home page available to us.

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet and the fate of the address

The site belongs to the mass layer of corporate representations of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: a small production firm's site on a hosting provider's subdomain, listed in the nn.ru directory under construction services with the description "Installation of concrete floors for industrial and civil use, polymer floors. Roofing work. Finishing work." (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating). No visitor statistics for the site were recorded in the surviving Counter.nn.ru samples. Neither the domain stab.r52.ru nor the company name appears in the final vote tally of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004[4].

By the time of the survey the address stab.r52.ru was not responding; the last available snapshot of the home page is dated June 9, 2004[3]. What remains of the site is mainly the early news feed, with its clients and scopes of work[1].

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 — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)