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UPDATE LOG

Everything that has changed.

ScholarAB is worked on in the open. This is every change since the project was started on March 2, 2026, grouped by month, then by week, and written for students rather than developers.

596+
CHANGES ON RECORD
18
ACTIVE WEEKS
6
MONTHS IN

March 2026

Three weeks of building, then the first version goes out the door with 115 scholarships already in it.

Mar 2 - 8
before version control

Day one. The project gets created, under a different name.

  • NEW The ScholarAB folder is created on March 2. The setup script that built it calls the project "scholarhat", so the name it ships under was not the name it started with.
  • UNDER THE HOOD The foundation gets picked in one go: Astro for the pages, Tailwind for the styling, React for the interactive parts, and strict type checking from the very first file.
  • NEW The first pages, the first components, and the file that would hold every scholarship all appear the same evening.
Mar 9 - 15
before version control

One shared frame for every page.

  • IMPROVED A single shared layout and one stylesheet arrive, so every page on the site inherits the same header, footer and typography instead of each one being built separately.
Mar 16 - 22
before version control

The automation and the launch prep.

  • UNDER THE HOOD Shared logic gets pulled into one place, so the same scholarship is described identically wherever it appears.
  • UNDER THE HOOD The robots are written the week before launch: retiring scholarships whose deadlines have passed, checking every link, validating the data, and handling scholarship submissions.
  • NEW The share image is drawn on March 22, the day before launch, so a link posted anywhere shows a proper preview.
Mar 23 - 29
all of the above, squashed into one

The first version ships, with 115 scholarships and 17 research programs.

  • NEW ScholarAB opens to the public. You can browse every listing, open a page for any single one, and save the ones you care about. No account, no login.
  • NEW Saved listings are kept on your own device, so nothing about you leaves your phone or laptop.
  • NEW A bar along the bottom of the screen on phones, so you can jump between sections with your thumb.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Two robots start work on day one: one retires scholarships once their deadline passes, one checks every link on the site to catch pages that have gone dead.

April 2026

The busiest month by far, at 369 changes. The match quiz, the research-program library, and the move to faster hosting all happened here.

Mar 30 - Apr 5
123 changes

The match quiz arrives, and listings become editable without a code change.

  • NEW The match quiz. Answer a handful of questions about your grade, school and interests, and get back the scholarships you actually qualify for instead of the full list.
  • NEW Long lists get page numbers, so the scholarships page no longer loads a hundred cards at once.
  • IMPROVED The scholarship and program cards were redesigned, and the homepage was rebuilt several times over until the numbers at the top read clearly.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Listings moved into a proper database with a private admin screen behind it. Before this, correcting a deadline meant editing the site's source code.
  • UNDER THE HOOD The whole codebase was converted to a stricter language (TypeScript) and the first automated tests were written, so mistakes get caught before they reach the site.
Apr 6 - 12
101 changes

The research-program library grows almost six-fold.

  • LISTINGS Research programs went from 17 to 97: summer labs, university programs and student research placements across Alberta and Canada.
  • LISTINGS Scholarships grew from 113 to 140, with duplicates weeded out along the way.
  • IMPROVED Scholarships and research programs used to be built from two separate pieces of code that slowly drifted apart. They were merged into one, so filtering, sorting and saving now behave identically on both pages.
  • IMPROVED The admin editing screens were reworked so listings could be corrected faster.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Every admin route got its own test.
Apr 13 - 19
145 changes

Email deadline alerts, an educators page, and a move to faster hosting.

  • NEW Deadline alerts. Give an email address and get a reminder before a scholarship you saved closes. Nothing else is ever sent to that address.
  • NEW A page for teachers and counsellors, with the numbers and links they need to point students here.
  • NEW An About page explaining who built the site and the rules it runs on: no ads, no sponsored listings, no personal data.
  • LISTINGS Regional coverage expanded to 148 scholarships, adding awards specific to Red Deer and Lethbridge.
  • IMPROVED The site moved to Cloudflare, which serves pages from a location near you instead of one far away.
  • UNDER THE HOOD The admin login was hardened: repeated failed attempts are now throttled, and passwords are stored properly.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Four rounds of cleanup deleted broken automation, dead code and duplicated tests. Link checking and full browser tests now run automatically on every change.

May 2026

A quieter month spent on accuracy: dead links, wrong counts, and a deploy that had broken the scholarships page.

May 1 - 10
10 changes

A link sweep catches 38 dead pages.

  • FIXED 38 broken links were repaired: 7 had moved to new addresses, and 5 programs had been discontinued entirely and were retired from the site.
  • FIXED The total dollar figure on the homepage was counting scholarships whose deadlines had already passed. It now only counts money you can still apply for.
  • LISTINGS Added the Medicine Hat Firefighters Charitable Foundation Scholarship.
  • UNDER THE HOOD All known security advisories in the site's dependencies were cleared.
May 11 - 17
13 changes

The scholarships page comes back from a 404, and six new awards land.

  • FIXED The main scholarships page had started returning "page not found" after a hosting change. Tracked down and fixed.
  • LISTINGS Six scholarships added: Voice for Animals, Luke Santi Memorial, Stuck at Prom, Fraser Institute, Valour Canada, and the Optimist Deaf/Hard of Hearing award. That brought the site to 155.
  • FIXED The match quiz was ignoring the eligibility rules on newer listings, so some scholarships never showed up as matches.
  • FIXED The homepage count was leaving out scholarships that have no fixed deadline.
May 18 - 31
7 changes

The match page gets a cleaner first impression.

  • IMPROVED The match page opens with a larger heading and a clearer explanation of what the quiz does before you start it.
  • IMPROVED Questions with four or more answers now lay out in two columns instead of one long stack.
  • FIXED The homepage scholarship count was frozen at whatever it was when the site was last built. It now counts live.

June 2026

A design pass across the whole site, then a focused rebuild of the match quiz.

Jun 1 - 7
22 changes

Closed scholarships stop hiding, and the site gets a visual refresh.

  • IMPROVED Closed scholarships now carry a red CLOSED chip and stay visible in the All tab, instead of quietly disappearing. If an award exists but has passed, you can still see it and plan for next year.
  • IMPROVED Listings sort in a sensible order: open now first, opening later next, closed last, with the most recently closed at the top of that group.
  • IMPROVED A visual refresh across the site: cards glow slightly on hover, the navigation underline slides between sections, award amounts sit in their own pill, and the quiz shows progress dots.
  • IMPROVED Empty states now say something useful when a filter returns nothing, instead of showing a blank page.
Jun 8 - 14
19 changes

The match quiz stops jumping around while you answer it.

  • FIXED The Previous button used to move down the screen as questions got longer, so you would reach for it and miss. The answer area is now a fixed height and the button stays put.
  • IMPROVED Answer tiles got taller on short questions, drop a shadow, and lift when you hover them, so it is obvious what you are about to pick.
  • IMPROVED On phones, the bottom navigation now sits flush as a proper tab bar, and cards stopped flickering as they loaded.
  • IMPROVED Moving between pages crossfades instead of jumping. Swiping left or right on a phone slides, as you would expect.
  • LISTINGS Added the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, worth $250,000 and closing September 15, 2026.
  • FIXED The Clear filters button did not always clear everything.
Jun 15 - 30
1 change

A single repair to the nightly data sync.

  • FIXED The automation that refreshes listings overnight had stopped running. Restarted.

July 2026

The biggest month of change since launch: a full editorial redesign, the guides section, a new logo, and a rebuild that made every page noticeably faster.

Jul 1 - 12
28 changes

A site-wide redesign, plus a fix for a build that had silently dropped most of the listings.

  • FIXED The live site had been building with only 28 scholarships instead of the full set. Fixed, along with a JavaScript error that was affecting every page.
  • FIXED Google was showing a generic globe next to ScholarAB in search results instead of the site's icon.
  • NEW Search on the scholarships page, and sorting on the programs page.
  • NEW A real 404 page. Before this, a mistyped address quietly served the homepage and pretended nothing was wrong.
  • IMPROVED Every main page (Home, Scholarships, Programs, Match, Saved, About, and the individual listing pages) was redesigned around a single editorial look.
  • FIXED Region filters and sorting on the list pages were returning the wrong results in some combinations.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Anonymous counting was added so it is possible to see which listings get opened most. No names, no emails, no cookies, no IP addresses.
Jul 13 - 19
75 changes

Guides, a new logo, related listings, and a rewrite of 80 descriptions.

  • NEW The Guides section: eight practical write-ups on the Rutherford scholarship, essay writing, reference letters, Grade 11 and 12 timelines, local awards, Medicine Hat awards, and trades and RAP funding.
  • NEW A "More like this" block at the bottom of every listing, so finding the next thing to apply for does not mean going back to the list.
  • NEW A new ScholarAB logo across the site, the browser tab, and the preview image that shows when a link is shared.
  • NEW Every open scholarship now generates its own share image, so sending a link to a friend shows the actual award rather than a generic banner.
  • IMPROVED 80 listing descriptions were rewritten by hand to sound like a person wrote them, not a template.
  • FIXED 18 dead links repaired, 12 on research programs and 6 on scholarships, and the link checker was hardened against sites that block automated checks.
  • FIXED Timezone bugs meant a scholarship could show as closed on its own deadline day, and retired listings could still appear in places. Fixed everywhere, including the homepage total and quiz results.
  • IMPROVED The pages were rebuilt to send far less code to your browser, which made them load and respond faster, especially on older phones.
  • IMPROVED The educators page was redesigned to match the rest of the site, and its numbers now agree with the homepage.
  • UNDER THE HOOD A security patch for the site framework, and search-engine fixes: correct canonical addresses, a redirect from the bare domain, and explicit permission for AI assistants to read the site.
  • UNDER THE HOOD A dataset of 531 Alberta high schools and the 171 school authorities behind them was assembled, for reaching counsellors directly.
Jul 20 - 26
21 changes

Research programs start showing up in quiz results again.

  • FIXED The match quiz was never returning research programs, only scholarships. Fixed, along with five smaller bugs found in the same sweep.
  • NEW Research programs can now be saved from the match results, and program rows line up with the scholarship rows above them.
  • FIXED Apply clicks were being counted twice, and some rows in the internal stats had no name attached.
  • IMPROVED Unsubscribing from deadline alerts now confirms it worked, instead of leaving you guessing.
  • IMPROVED The social handles were updated: Instagram at @scholarab.ca and TikTok at @scholarab.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Full browser tests now run on every single change, not just occasionally.
Jul 27 - 31
15 changes

A mobile app layout, and the Rutherford page stops guessing at a deadline.

  • FIXED The Rutherford guide listed a deadline that does not officially exist. It was removed, the eligibility was corrected to Grades 10 and 11, and the guide now answers the question people actually search for: when the application opens.
  • FIXED The Mehl and Wolf award deadlines were corrected against their official pages.
  • NEW A dedicated app-style layout for phones. Visiting the site on a phone now lands in it, with saved listings and research programs carried across.
  • IMPROVED The alert reminder schedule is now something you choose, rather than a fixed setting.
  • IMPROVED The quiz says it takes 30 seconds, because that is how long it actually takes.
  • UNDER THE HOOD Every internal link was pointed at one consistent address format, which had been splitting each page into two entries in Google.

August 2026

The 2026-27 cycle refresh: every date checked, every link checked.

Aug 1 - 2
15 changes

Every listing re-dated for the new school year, and nothing on the site reads CLOSED.

  • LISTINGS Provincial bursaries, national awards, Alberta-wide awards and the city collections were all rolled forward to the 2026-27 cycle. As of August 2, nothing on the site is showing as closed.
  • FIXED The Indspire and CPA Alberta listings were checked against their live pages and corrected.
  • FIXED The last two dead addresses were repaired. All 251 links on the site now resolve.
  • IMPROVED Research program fields were simplified so the details row fits on one line instead of wrapping.
  • UNDER THE HOOD The project was formally licensed: the code is open source, the listing data can be reused with credit, and the ScholarAB name and logo stay reserved.
  • UNDER THE HOOD The alert signup form now cleans up email addresses before storing them, with tests covering it.

How this list was built. It is reconstructed from the project's own history, not written from memory, and the early record is thinner than the later one.

The history was tidied up as it went, with early changes merged together and squashed. Everything from March 2, 2026 to March 23, 2026 now survives as one single entry, and the versions it replaced are gone. So those first three weeks are dated from the files on disk instead, which is why they carry no count. From March 23, 2026 to April 19, changes were filed under one repeated placeholder note, so those weeks were rebuilt from what the changes themselves touched.

That makes 596, counted on August 2, 2026, a floor rather than a total: it is what remained after the cleanup, not everything that was done. Counts are separate recorded changes, so a week with a hundred was a week of many small adjustments, not a hundred new features.

Most recent entry: Aug 1 - 2. Something look wrong? Tell me about it.

ScholarAB is a free directory of scholarships and research programs for Alberta high school students, with deadlines tracked. No account needed.

© 2026 ScholarAB · Medicine Hat, Alberta Listing data CC BY-SA 4.0 · credit ScholarAB and link back · ScholarAB™ name and logo not included