text4.ru ("Text for Runet") is a website about web editing and web writing that launched on November 22, 2004[1]. The project entered the Nizhny Novgorod census through the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day contest, where votes were cast for Nizhny Novgorod sites: in December 2004 "Text for Runet" was listed in the contest under number 153 in the "Most Useful Site" category and received two votes by email and one by SMS — 42nd place among 47 entrants in the category[2]. The surviving snapshots name neither an owner nor a city address: the site was not a city site but a professional one, addressed to people who write text for other people's websites. How long the original project lived the snapshots do not show; later the address repeatedly changed its content, and the last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated September 12, 2024[6].

A site about web writing (2004)

The first surviving snapshot was made on November 28, 2004, six days after launch. The page title was "Text for Runet — a site about web editing"[1]. The idea was set out in the launch announcement of November 22: "Runet has a mass of resources for programmers and no fewer for designers, but there is no site about web writing as a profession, about its specifics and peculiarities"[1]. The same announcement told the story of how it came about: first came the idea of an independent forum about web writing as a place for amateurs and specialists to talk, then came the need to summarize and publish typical recommendations for those facing, for the first time, the task of starting work on text for a company's or organization's website; once combined, the two directions required a separate site[1].

The top menu consisted of the sections "Ab ovo," "What to do," "Articles," "Discussions," and "Links"[1]. A separate block listed types of sites — a corporate site, a "business-card site with price list," an informational site, thematic resources, a service site, a scientific site, an author's site, a community — with captions like "Text creation," "More facts," "Sharp discussions," "Specialists only"[1]. The home page featured three articles: "Effective preparation of a site for search engine indexing," "Tables in HTML tags," and "Restricting access to a site and other functions of the '.htaccess' file"[1]. It also listed a free classifieds board "Supply and Demand" — "for those who sell their own texts and those who buy others'" — a "Web Writing" forum with the topic "Writing texts for the web: profession or hobby?," and a chat[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet

The site gained no notability. In the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, text4.ru has no position in the Counter.nn.ru rating: it entered the census only through the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting. In its category it placed 42nd: the category leader, "Nizhny Novgorod Auto Forum.nnov.ru," had 212 votes by email and 36 by SMS, while "Text for Runet" had two and one[2]. For the end of 2004 this is understandable: the site launched on November 22[1], meaning it had existed for a mere few weeks by the December vote. In content it was not a Nizhny Novgorod site in the usual sense either — the home page has no city news, no addresses, no phone numbers; its local tie was not in its subject matter but in the environment it grew out of.

Domain for sale (2014)

The next preserved snapshot dates to December 18, 2014, and by then it was no longer a site but a sale listing: "This domain is for sale for 15,000 rubles!"[3]. The seller emphasized the name's age — the domain "was first registered before 2008" — and urged the buyer to hurry: in January 2015 a meeting of the Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain on the budget was expected, at which an increase in registration and renewal fees in the .RU zone was planned, so the price was said to be valid only until February 1, 2015[3]. According to the seller, the name had been chosen out of ten thousand and "was caught the moment it became available, or bought at an auction of expiring domains"[3]. Contact was given by email at the domain DomImen.ru; the price included full legal transfer of the domain's rights within a day and renewal at 99 rubles a year[3].

Other people's projects at the old address

By August 5, 2020, the address text4.ru hosted a site calling itself "Gleb Zheglov — a hard-hitting event-driven legal TV channel": a long feed of headlines about courts, police, and incidents, mixed with old films and TV shows, with no connection to the former content[4].

In the early 2020s the address returned to texts, but by another route. A snapshot from September 21, 2023 shows a "TEXT4 copywriters' exchange" with the sections "Home," "Orders," "Authors," "Rules," "Help," registration, and login; the footer reads "© TEXT4, 2022–2023"[5]. The exchange worked on a tender principle: a client placed an order on the site, authors submitted bids and could either accept the stated price or offer their own, and the client chose the performer[5]. Services were divided into copywriting (advertising texts, slogans and scripts for TV, radio and events, articles and website content, SEO texts) and rewriting — reworking a finished text in one's own words while preserving its meaning[5]. Nineteen years after the forum about web writing, the very same address was selling exactly the work around which the "profession or hobby" question had been raised in 2004 — but the two projects have nothing in common besides the address.

The last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated September 12, 2024; no text can be extracted from it[6]. As of the liveness check made while compiling this census, the domain text4.ru is no longer occupied.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, November 28, 2004 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting rating, snapshot December 26, 2004 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, December 18, 2014 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, August 5, 2020 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, September 21, 2023 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page, September 12, 2024 (last snapshot) (archive)