mybor.ru — a domain name conceived for a website about the city of Bor, which in practice spent several months in 2004 serving as a home platform for Bor forum users and — for a very brief time — as a fan site for British musician Mark Owen, supported by Universal Music Russia [1][2][3]. The city portal never came to life: from autumn 2004 onwards, the front page displayed an untouched demo installation of the Mambo Open Source system [1]. The domain then went on to survive a registration lapse, someone else's abandoned blog, eighteen months of hosting errors, and — from 2021 — an online shop selling dental burs, playing on the second meaning of the name [4][5][6][7].
The portal that never was
The domain was first recorded in 2004 — the same year that Nizhny Novgorod, on the opposite bank of the Volga from Bor, hosted the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet competition [1]. The earliest saved copy of the site, dated 10 October 2004, is titled "MyBor.Ru — MoyBor.Ru" and shows a brand-new, completely untouched installation of the Mambo Open Source 4.5 content management system: menu items reading "Home", "News", "Articles", "FAQ", "Links", "Contacts", a section labelled "No items in this category", a poll titled "Your opinion of MOS 4.5" with answer options ranging from "Excellent work! It'll come in handy around the house" to "Don't need it even for free…", sample entries "Example FAQ Item 1" and "Example FAQ Item 2", and a counter showing eighteen visitors [1]. The system's tagline — "Power in Simplicity!" — remained in the spot where the city portal's own tagline was supposed to appear [1].
No city-related content ever appeared on this page: the topics of Bor, Borsky District, or its residents are not mentioned on the homepage even once [1].
Bor's netizens: the forum and subdomains
Unlike the empty homepage, the site's forum — with the tagline "this is where Bor's netizens live!" — had accumulated 1,320 messages from 33 participants by December 2004 [2]. The forum's sections discussed news from the city of Bor ("politics, crime, culture, business, sports"), dating and relationships, and a separate unmoderated section was set up specifically for those who wanted to "let off steam" [2]. Among the topics were local ones: "Khvatkovskaya dacha" and a proposal to meet "at the maks-café" [2].
The domain also briefly offered free subdomains for personal pages — a rare gesture of hospitality for a small hosting service of that era. The most unexpected example was a fan site for British musician Mark Owen, a member of Take That, called "From Russia with Love," created "with the support of Universal Music Russia" [3]. Between the demo installation of a city portal and discussions of local dachas, mybor.ru also found room for a record-label-endorsed fan club of a pop star.
The domain without a website: 2013–2022
By June 2013, the domain registration had expired and delegation had been suspended [4]. In May 2014, a blank blog briefly appeared at the address, containing a single post — "Hello, world!" dated September 16, 2012 — the standard placeholder entry of a freshly installed system that was never followed up [5]. From December 2014 through early 2016, the domain pointed to no website at all: any attempt to visit it automatically redirected to the Timeweb hosting service's "error_domain" page — the usual sign that the domain had been unlinked from its hosting account while the DNS delegation was left uncorrected [6].
In 2021, the address acquired its third owner: an online shop running on OpenCart, selling Frank Dental brand diamond dental burs — spherical and standard types, listed under article numbers such as d-801-007-f-fg, with a discounted price of 52.35 rubles for the most popular size [7]. The domain name happened to coincide with the second meaning of the Russian word "bor" — a dental drill bit, not the city. The shop was demonstrably active from at least June through August 2021, but by December 17 of that year the storefront had been replaced not by advertising but by the Beget hosting service's technical page reading "Domain is not linked to any directory on the server" — the usual sign that the owner had stopped paying for hosting or had unlinked the site [8].
| Year | Domain status |
|---|---|
| 2004 | a demo installation of Mambo, but a live forum and fan site on subdomains [1][2][3] |
| 2013 | registration expired [4] |
| 2014 | empty "Hello, World!" blog [5] |
| 2014–2016 | Timeweb hosting error instead of a website [6] |
| 2021 | Frank Dental online store for dental burs (June–August) [7] |
| from December 2021 | Beget hosting placeholder "domain not connected" [8] |
Main page by year
Sources
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — Mambo Open Source demo installation, October 10, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — "this is where Bor's network folks live!", October 22, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — Mark Owen fan site, November 29, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — expired domain registration, June 20, 2013 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — blank "Hello, World!" blog, May 17, 2014 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — redirect to Timeweb hosting error page, December 18, 2014 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — Frank Dental online store catalog, June 22, 2021 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Web Archive — Beget hosting placeholder "domain not linked", December 17, 2021 (archive)