solsnab.r52.ru was the site of OJSC "Solsnab", a wholesale salt-trading enterprise from the city of Dzerzhinsk in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast[1]. The site operated in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru and was hosted there as well: at the bottom of the home page was the caption "Hosted by r52.ru"[1]. The copyright notice on the home page was dated 2001[1], and the last surviving snapshot dates to February 2003[3].
The enterprise
As the home page stated, OJSC "Solsnab" had been "founded in 1992"[1]. The company described its location as a key advantage: the enterprise was situated in Dzerzhinsk "on the bank of the Oka", had its own mooring wall (a port), had access to the railway, and a motor highway ran nearby[1]. This proximity of three modes of transport, according to the site, made it possible to work "with clients both from Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and other regions of the country, as well as with foreign companies"[1].
What the site offered
The sole item of trade was salt. The site listed its range by purpose: salt for industrial enterprises — grind No. 3; salt for agricultural enterprises — lick-block and briquette; food-grade salt — extra and grind No. 1, packed in 50- and 25-kilogram sacks, as well as in packs, sachets, and jars; iodized salt[1]. Packaging types were specified separately: packs, sacks, containers (big bags), and bulk salt[1]. Besides the goods themselves, the company offered "a wide range of services for packaging, transportation, etc."[1].
The site's structure was simple and typical of corporate web presences of the early 2000s: sections "About the company" (also the home page), "Price list", "Our services", and "Contacts", where, as indicated on the home page, the company's details were located[1]. Neither an address nor a phone number was published on the home page itself — these were placed on a separate contacts page, snapshots of which are absent from the material available to us. The home page ended with an invitation to cooperate addressed to "all who are interested"[1]. The site's production was credited with the line "Coding by Info-online"[1]. There were no visitor counters on the home page.
Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet
The site belonged to the r52.ru zone, one of the Nizhny Novgorod domain zones, and was listed in the nn.ru directory, appearing in the wholesale trade category with a description that repeated the home page's product range. It does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating, which is unsurprising for a narrow-industry site of an industrial supplier: traffic to such web presences was measured not by ratings but by client calls. In the surviving results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, "Solsnab" also does not appear[4] — by the time of the vote, judging by the snapshots, the site was no longer being updated.
Nevertheless, it is a characteristic example of that layer of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet that rarely made it into ratings and reviews: not a media outlet or entertainment portal, but a regional enterprise's network calling card, made once and left unchanged. More on the structure of this layer can be found in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.
How it closed
The site did not change throughout its existence: the texts of the snapshots from August 2002[1], November 2002[2], and February 2003[3] match word for word, down to the 2001 copyright notice. Only a handful of Web Archive captures of the home page survive, and the last snapshot is dated February 12, 2003[3]. The site's further fate cannot be traced in the materials available to us; the domain solsnab.r52.ru no longer exists today. Of the Dzerzhinsk salt trader's web presence, three identical archived snapshots and one line in a directory remain.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day voting results, 2004 (archive)