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PO Box 2826
Carol Stream, Illinois 60132

Toll Free: 1-800-793-9455

© 2024 Opportunity Internationala 501(c)3 nonprofit. EIN: 540907624.

Pushing the Boundaries of Technology

By David Santoso

2013 was an inspiring year. In this blog series, the 12 Days of Opportunity, we are celebrating the accomplishments made possible by our caring and generous community of partners and supporters. Because of you, our clients are working their way out of poverty, strengthening their families and building vibrant communities in 22 countries around the world. 

It’s incredible how fast time can pass. I remember about a year ago, we started thinking about a new website, one that would better communicate who we are, what we’re passionate about, and how other people could join us. We went through website after website, taking notes of things that were done well, and things that weren’t. We mined data about our current site looking at trends, drop offs, and traffic tendencies. From the creative side to the technical, building a new website wasn’t just about clean fonts, flat design, and beautiful colors (although those are certainly imporant!), it was really about finding a way to embody Opportunity International in a way that had not been done before. After six months of causal lunch conversations, design mockups, formal meetings with various departments, and historical site data mining, we set out to design and build a website from the ground up that that would truely capture a revitalized Opportunity International.

Fast forward to the morning of December 9th, launch day. There were still things that needed to be done, but we were commited to that day. The morning was a flurry of emails, quick code changes, small bug fixes, and finally, routing traffic to the new website. It was fairly nerve racking! After updating our DNS records, I sat at my computer hitting refresh in my web browser waiting for the changes to take effect. A few minutes later, it loaded under opportunity.org and it was finally live. After months of work, it's still slightly surreal that it's live and we couldn’t be more happy with how it turned out. We’re still working on it, refining, trying our best to make it better. There will always be more we can do!

At Opportunity we’re always trying to push the boundries in tech and the new website is just one example. We hope it makes it easier for you to get to know us and the work we do. While you’re browsing our site, be sure to check out a few client stories, where we work, and ways you can be involved. As always, we appreciate any feedback you might have on the site too. Feel free to contact us and let us know what you think, both good and bad! Just click on the contact us link in the footer and send us a quick note. Thanks for checking out the new site and if you’re curious about some of the more technical side of things, check out our tech blog at birdsbillscode.tumblr.com.

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