dara.r52.ru was the website of a Nizhny Novgorod wholesale food company, TK "Dara" LLC (Trading Company "Dara"), which existed in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone r52.ru in the first half of the 2000s. As the home page stated, the company "holds a stable position among large wholesale firms in the food products market of Nizhny Novgorod and the Nizhny Novgorod Region"[1]. The copyright notice on all surviving screenshots reads "© 2000 TK \"DARA\""[1], and the first web archive capture was made on March 31, 2001[1].
One page for three years
The site consisted of a single page. Its title was "TK \"DARA\" | About the Company"[1], and no other section opens in the surviving captures: the entire site consisted of six short paragraphs of corporate information totaling under a thousand characters. At the bottom was the developer's credit — "Web Design by Teamoty Brane Inc"[1]. The captures show no postal address, no phone number, no price list, and no visit counter — the page invited contact with the company but gave no contact details for it.
The page's markup carried a set of keywords that tells more about the assortment than the text itself: "products, groats, pasta, sugar, flour, confectionery, macaroni products, barter, cooperation, groceries, cookies, dragee, hard cheeses"[1].
Over three years of observation the text barely changed. The only edit between the captures of March 31, 2001 and January 20, 2002 was in the list of what the firm was willing to give in exchange for food products — GAZ automobiles and lumber were joined by fuels and lubricants[2]. The capture of June 10, 2003 repeats the 2002 version word for word[3].
What "Dara" traded
The home page named granulated sugar, groats, and flour as its main lines[1]. The company, as the home page stated, had "extensive partner ties with many regions of the Russian Federation for food supplies," and its managers conducted "active work to attract new suppliers and producers to cooperation"[1].
A separate paragraph was devoted to barter schemes: the firm stated directly that it "actively uses barter schemes in its practice," offering in exchange for food-group goods GAZ automobiles — "any make, any trim" — and lumber[1], and, from the 2002 version on, fuels and lubricants as well[2]. A readiness to consider "any proposals for joint activity" stood as the final line[1]. Thus barter was given no less space on the site's single page than the description of the company's own assortment.
A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet
The third-level domain in the r52.ru zone places the site within the Nizhny Novgorod Internet by definition; it entered this census from the nn.ru catalog's directory, where it was listed as "Trading Company \"Dara\"" with a description of its assortment — granulated sugar, groats, flour, macaroni and confectionery products (see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating).
"Dara" was not a notable participant in the city's online life. The domain dara.r52.ru does not appear in the final vote tally of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day 2004[4]. The site also does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter: neither a ranking position nor a visit count is recorded in our data. Judging by the page's content, it was not designed for an outside visitor either: the site addressed suppliers and partners, not buyers.
How it closed
In total, the web archive index for dara.r52.ru lists two dozen captures, the last one dated June 12, 2004[5]. According to a note recorded during a liveness check, since 2004 the address has hosted not a site but a parking page. At the time of this census, the domain dara.r52.ru does not exist: the address is not maintained, and the site's content survives only in the web archive.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Vote results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org (archive)