safoni.narod.ru was a personal literary website of an author who signed himself Sergio Safoni, known from archived snapshots dating back to October 2003[1]. The Nizhny Novgorod connection sat right on the home page: next to the menu lived a weather widget "Weather in N. Novgorod"[1], and later a link "Avtofara - NN"[2], and in 2004 the site took part in the vote for the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in the "Best Personal Site" category[5]. In substance the project stopped in 2012: that is the year the copyright notice in the footer of the last versions of the page ends on[3].

"That's All Me": the 2003 site

The earliest preserved snapshot of the home page is dated October 9, 2003[1]. It is a typical home page of the era: one long menu mixing every genre at once — "My Photo Album," "Weather in N. Novgorod," "I Recommend...," "My Creative Work," "Recipes from Sergio," "Other Poets' Creative Work," "Let's Talk...," "The Parlor," "Latest...," "THAT'S ALL ME!," "To My Admirers," "I'm in Touch!!!" and a poll "Your Opinion"[1]. A separate line carried the signature "Sergio Safoni Publishing House ®" — a one-man publishing house[1].

The feedback options were also thoroughly of their era: the number "My ICQ 170470258" and an item "Text Messages"[1]. There was no address or phone number on the home page — the site was not a business site but a private one.

The center of the home page was occupied not by a welcome text but by a poem. It began with the lines "A hunter after women's bodies and souls, / I am young, alone, and wilderness is in my heart"[1] — a tone that also set the register for the other sections, from "Admirers" to "Let's Talk..."

A publishing house of one

By the snapshot from January 21, 2012, the menu had been rebuilt around the figure of the author[2]. New items appeared: "Photos from Sergio," "Advice and Gems from Sergio," "Essays from Sergio Safoni," "Assorted Files" — and that same "Avtofara - NN" link[2]. "Recipes from Sergio," "The Parlor," "To My Admirers," "THAT'S ALL ME!" and the poll survived[2]. But the weather widget, "Other Poets' Creative Work" and "I'm in Touch!!!" disappeared[1][2]. The same poem still stood on the home page, and the ICQ number had not changed[2]. The page title had changed too: in 2003 it was simply "Sergio Safoni"[1], now it was "Sergio Safoni - Official Site"[2].

The copyright notice in this snapshot reads "© 2003-2008 Sergio Safoni"[2] — meaning that the page, captured in 2012, had already gone several years without its footer being updated by that point. At the bottom sat a "Yandex.Direct" ad block[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site does not appear in the surviving snapshot of the Counter.nn.ru rating: it came within view of the census only through the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in 2004[5]. There, a private home page on a narod.ru subdomain competed in the "Best Personal Site" category alongside 35 other sites, ranging from club and music projects to personal pages[5]. Sergio Safoni received 16 votes by email and 10 by SMS: by number of emails, that placed it fourteenth in the category[5]. For more on the selection method and how such votes were counted, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed down

Between 2012 and 2019 the site went through a rebuild — and not toward growth. In the snapshot from September 15, 2019, only five items remained of the once-crowded menu: "Thoughts," "Texts before 2000," "Texts after 2000," "Photos," "Contacts"[3]. The recipes, the parlor, the poll, the admirers section and the ICQ number disappeared, and the poem was also gone from the page[3]. What remained was a plain literary showcase, divided by a single criterion — before 2000 and after. The copyright notice changed to "© 2003-2012"[3], and the site did not move past that date afterward.

The last snapshot in the web archive is dated April 19, 2026, and it repeats the 2019 version word for word: the same five menu items, the same 2012 copyright notice[4]. A liveness check on the domain, taken in the course of the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, did not return a live page title, and in the census registry the site is marked as dead. The record does not track the fate of the address itself beyond the archive.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2012 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2019 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2026 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)