This looks so much like https://dns.he.net/ that it seems to me it can’t be a coincidence. Is this a case of copying a well known design or is there more to it?
It's possible they are both descendants from XName: https://web.archive.org/web/20120625081138/http://source.xna...
Doesn't look that similar to me, they both just look a bit old.
I wouldn't think much of it. It was a popular design trend for a while there; some just never updated. I don't blame them, it's fairly decent on readability and minimalism.
The "portal" layout style was very popular on Web 1.0, reminds me of PHP-Nuke.