students.nino.ru was a Nizhny Novgorod student portal that ran from February 2001 on the server of the provider Nizhny Novgorod Information Networks. It is the second-largest section of the nino.ru domain (32,224 saved pages) and the longest-lived of its sites: the last snapshot is dated September 28, 2021, meaning the portal stood for twenty years [1]. The page header was simple — "Student Campus" — and beneath it came news of student life, photo reports from clubs, and the NGLU electronic newspaper "Linguist".
What it consisted of
In December 2003, the portal's menu looked like this: "Home", "News", "Sections", "White Label", "For Students…", "Creative Work", "Photo Galleries", "Press", "Universities", "Humor", "Useful", "Forums", "Interactive" [2]. Alongside them ran the little features that mark a living website: "Joke of the Day" and "Sunday Joke", a poll of the week, and a visitor-record counter.
By the end of 2006 the set had changed: "PlayDJ" appeared in place of "White Label", "Projects" was added, and "Humor" and "Press" were gone [3]. The structure stayed the same — an engine with member profiles, a forum, and an RSS feed; page addresses to the very end looked like /?id=102111&template=help&action=showprofile [1].
What it did
The portal's main business was photo reports. In 2003 these included Halloween at the club "Gudok", a concert by "Kirpichi" at the Matritsa on October 30, the gala concert of the "Freshmen's Festival" at "Pyaty Element" on October 16, a youth fashion festival at the same venue on October 18, and, as a special point of pride, an "exclusive photo report from Natalia Oreiro's only concert in Nizhny Novgorod" on October 13 [2].
The portal itself also called people out to events. On December 6, 2003, in the ROCCO club, it announced the third Nizhny Novgorod DJ Day, "Dandee2003," where awards were handed out in five categories by direct vote; for December 20, it announced the twelve-hour festival "Olympiad 2: Mix Fight Arena" at the Nagorny Sports Palace, which it billed as the largest dance project in the Volga Federal District [2]. In 2006–2007 the event listings became more modest: concerts at "Rocco," the Puppet Theater, and a rock bar, album presentations, New Year's parties [3][4].
The portal was accompanied by NGLU's electronic newspaper "Lingvist" — its materials appeared on the main page in a separate block: a report from the press conference for "Stars on Ice" at the Volna Hotel, an account by a student from Germany about his alternative service in Nizhny Novgorod, and notes on a journalist's work [3][4].
How many people read it
The portal displayed its traffic record right on the main page, and that line shows its growth: November 26, 2003 — 794 hosts in a day [2], October 24, 2006 — 3,924 hosts [3]. The portal kept the second figure on its main page a year later as well [4].
In November 2003 the main page also reported a win in the "Crystal Orange" PR projects competition [2].
Who made it
The portal's design was redone by the Nizhny Novgorod web studio Grafit, whose sites the provider hosted on its own domain: in its list of works dated March 20, 2003, it names "Remake of the Nizhny Novgorod Student Portal — www.students.nino.ru" [5]. The engine, with profiles, a forum, and a tree of sections, was also its own development, Treegraph, the same one that ran on the neighboring sites of the domain.
How it ended
The portal faded slowly and visibly. In October 2007 an advertising insert about online poker appeared among the main page's materials, pasted straight into the text between a photo report and the event listings [4] — a sure sign that no one was watching the page closely anymore.
Nevertheless, the address kept responding for another fourteen years: the last page snapshots were taken on September 28, 2021, shortly before the entire nino.ru domain stopped being served [1].
Home page through the years
Sources
- web.archive.org (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, snapshot of December 1, 2003 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, snapshot of December 27, 2006 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, snapshot of October 3, 2007 (archive)
- web.archive.org — List of works by the "Grafit" studio, snapshot of December 30, 2003 (archive)