The Derby-Shelton Rotary club was one of the first in the state to establish an Internet presence in the late ’90’s. Originally, it was just a single page on the Electronic Valley website that was a part of a community planning project called Healthy Valley 2000. Recognizing the importance of the emerging new technology, Healthy Valley set out to create a community website inclusive of all activities in the community including a Civic Groups category for groups like Derby-Shelton Rotary. Rotary had a listing and just a single page to start. That evolved into a series of pages and eventually Rotary split off and created a full site with its own URL. In the early days of low bandwidth, the site was a bit limited with graphics files in particular needing to be small.
Over time use of the Internet continued to evolve and the introduction of smart phones and tablets brought a whole new dimension to how and when people accessed the Internet. Rotary kept up with the addition of Facebook and YouTube, but the software used to maintain the website wasn’t flexible enough to work seamlessly with new devices. That all changes with this new website which is being maintained with WordPress software. Navigation will now be much easier with a robust menu system. The new site is also fully searchable and designed to be viewed properly on any device. Twitter has been added to our Social Media offerings as well. So after a little less than 20 years after first appearing on the Internet, Derby-Shelton Rotary is now poised and ready for whatever comes our way with the continued evolution of the Internet.