UPDATE LOG
Everything that has changed.
ScholarAB is built in the open. This is what has changed since March 2, 2026, month by month, in plain English.
596+
CHANGES ON RECORD
70
ENTRIES LOGGED
6
MONTHS IN
March 2026
Three weeks of building under two names that did not stick, then launch with 115 scholarships.
- UNDER THE HOOD The first plan, from late February, covered Medicine Hat only and ran off a spreadsheet.
- NEW Work starts March 2. A tool that builds a site from a description failed twice, so it was written by hand instead.
- NEW March 6: the four biggest Canadian scholarship sites were taken apart to see what to do differently. Five rules came out of it and all five are still here — no account, cards you can skim, the dollar total up front, and closing soonest first.
- UNDER THE HOOD The name changes that day: "ScholarHat" was already taken by a big training company. The next one used the 403 area code.
- NEW ScholarAB on March 14. The 403 idea was dropped because 403 means nothing to a student in Edmonton.
- IMPROVED One shared layout, so every page looks the same instead of being built separately.
- FIXED Scholarship cards would not line up on phones. The card had to be rebuilt from scratch.
- NEW A filter on March 16: pick the university you are heading to, and the list narrows to what fits.
- NEW The logo arrives March 17, with an icon for each region.
- NEW A teacher pointed out that students lose everything they find by the next day. Saving listings came out of that.
- UNDER THE HOOD The robots get written: retiring closed scholarships, and checking every link.
- IMPROVED March 22, the night before launch: one plain typeface everywhere, and a home page that points you somewhere instead of dumping the whole list on you.
- NEW scholarab.ca goes live that evening, with a preview picture for shared links.
- NEW March 23: ScholarAB opens to the public with 115 scholarships and 17 research programs. Browse everything, save what you like. No account, no login.
- NEW Saved listings stay on your own device. Nothing about you leaves it.
- NEW A bar along the bottom on phones, for jumping between sections.
- NEW The first guide: how to apply for scholarships in Alberta.
- UNDER THE HOOD Two robots start on launch day: one retires closed scholarships, one hunts for dead links.
369 CHANGES
April 2026
The busiest month by far: the match quiz, the program library, faster hosting.
- NEW The match quiz. Answer a few questions and get back only the scholarships you qualify for.
- NEW Page numbers on long lists, so the page stops loading a hundred cards at once.
- UNDER THE HOOD Listings moved into a database with a private admin screen. Before this, fixing a deadline meant editing the site's code.
- LISTINGS Research programs went from 17 to 97: summer labs and student placements.
- LISTINGS Scholarships grew from 113 to 148, adding awards for Red Deer and Lethbridge, with duplicates weeded out.
- IMPROVED Scholarships and programs ran on two sets of code that had drifted apart. Merged, so filtering, sorting and saving now behave the same on both.
- NEW Deadline alerts. Give an email address, get a reminder before a saved scholarship closes. Nothing else is ever sent.
- NEW A page for teachers and counsellors.
- NEW An About page, and the rules: no ads, no sponsored listings, no personal data.
- IMPROVED The site moved to Cloudflare, so pages come from somewhere near you.
- UNDER THE HOOD Link checks and browser tests now run on every change.
30 CHANGES
May 2026
A quieter month on accuracy: dead links, wrong counts, a broken scholarships page.
- FIXED 38 broken links repaired. 5 programs had shut down for good and were retired.
- FIXED The dollar total on the home page was counting closed scholarships. It now counts only money you can still apply for.
- FIXED The scholarships page had started showing "page not found" after a hosting change.
- FIXED The match quiz was ignoring the rules on newer listings, so some never matched.
- LISTINGS Seven scholarships added, including the Medicine Hat Firefighters Charitable Foundation Scholarship, bringing the site to 155.
- IMPROVED The match page now explains what the quiz does before you start.
- IMPROVED Questions with four or more answers now sit in two columns.
- FIXED The home page count was frozen at whatever it was when the site was last built. It now counts live.
42 CHANGES
June 2026
A design pass across the whole site, then a rebuild of the match quiz.
- IMPROVED Closed scholarships now carry a red CLOSED chip and stay in the All tab, so you can plan for next year.
- IMPROVED Listings sort in a sensible order: open now, opening later, then closed.
- IMPROVED A visual refresh: cards glow on hover, amounts sit in their own pill, the quiz shows progress dots.
- IMPROVED A filter that finds nothing now says so instead of going blank.
- FIXED The Previous button used to slide down the screen on longer questions, so you would reach for it and miss. It stays put now.
- IMPROVED Answer tiles lift when you hover them, so it is clear what you are picking.
- IMPROVED Moving between pages crossfades, and swiping left or right on a phone slides.
- LISTINGS Added the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, worth $250,000.
- FIXED Clear filters did not always clear everything.
- FIXED The overnight listing refresh had stopped running. Restarted.
139 CHANGES
July 2026
The biggest month since launch: a full redesign, the guides, a new logo, faster pages.
- FIXED The live site was building with 28 scholarships instead of the full set.
- NEW Search on the scholarships page, and sorting on the programs page.
- NEW A real 404 page. A mistyped address used to quietly serve the home page instead.
- IMPROVED Every main page was redesigned around a single look.
- UNDER THE HOOD Anonymous counting of which listings get opened. No names, emails, cookies or IP addresses.
- NEW The Guides section: eight write-ups on Rutherford, essays, reference letters, Grade 11 and 12 timelines, local awards and trades funding.
- NEW A "More like this" block at the bottom of every listing, so you do not have to go back to the list.
- NEW A new logo across the site, the browser tab, and shared links.
- NEW Every open scholarship gets its own share picture, so a link shows the actual award.
- IMPROVED 80 listing descriptions rewritten by hand.
- FIXED 18 dead links repaired.
- FIXED A timezone bug could show a scholarship as closed on its own deadline day.
- IMPROVED Pages send far less code to your browser, so they load faster on older phones.
- FIXED The match quiz was returning scholarships only, never research programs. Fixed, with five smaller bugs.
- NEW Research programs can now be saved straight from the match results.
- IMPROVED Unsubscribing from deadline alerts now confirms it worked.
- FIXED The Rutherford guide listed a deadline that does not officially exist. It was removed, and the guide now says when applications open instead.
- FIXED The Mehl and Wolf deadlines were corrected against their official pages.
- NEW An app-style layout for phones, with your saved listings carried over.
- IMPROVED You now choose when alert reminders arrive.
15 CHANGES
August 2026
The 2026-27 refresh: every date checked, every link checked.
- LISTINGS Provincial, national and city awards were all rolled forward to the 2026-27 cycle. As of August 2, nothing on the site reads closed.
- FIXED The last two dead addresses were repaired. All 251 links now work.
- UNDER THE HOOD The project was licensed: the code is open source, and the listing data can be reused with credit.