OpenAltFinder changes in August, 2026

With August in the rearview mirror - and just like last July, I wanted to look back at all the changes I've made to OpenAltFinder.

Reading through all my commits, there's been quite a few big changes.

The commit log

a696c7c 2026-09-01 Ensure to populate license during ranking
4e490cc 2026-09-01 Use new Platform during scoring
3ee19c2 2026-09-01 Add new Platform type to Strapi
4481a05 2026-08-28 Improve mobile request page
7ad0adf 2026-08-28 Add new "request" feature
5ae3e9b 2026-08-26 Move score higher up
541b707 2026-08-25 Only display breakdown if available
03be1fd 2026-08-25 Display scoring breakdown
4e3c4da 2026-08-25 Replace sponsor links with buttons
6476e0b 2026-08-24 Fix broken exports
70a5202 2026-08-24 Upgrade Astro to 7.2.4
8c0c588 2026-08-24 Store rank breakdown Add AI penalty
024ec6c 2026-08-24 Display score on tool page
153cba6 2026-08-24 Add new rank endpoint to store alternative ranks
d6e0c61 2026-08-24 Fix search ranking in weekly report
cde64b3 2026-08-24 Add rank component to Alternative
3b98eca 2026-08-17 Updated metadata
b69ec1e 2026-08-16 Updated metadata
fbfda94 2026-08-16 Add .tmp to gitignore
2ab571c 2026-08-16 Display star history on compare pages
0cda157 2026-08-16 Do not show licenses with no tools
930dce2 2026-08-16 Do not index tag / license pages with less than 5 tools
93fb9a6 2026-08-16 Remove lastmod from static pages Correctly calculate lastmod for compare pages
bedfac3 2026-08-12 Fix date formatting
b757719 2026-08-12 Correctly show "hours ago"
c1e0a36 2026-08-12 Add new feed and feed-entry types
85d11be 2026-08-12 Add new Reader
1b322da 2026-08-11 Add authentication to private routes
e819f71 2026-08-10 Updated metadata
6d6b1f4 2026-08-08 Fix broken index page
c3665b4 2026-08-08 Preserve existing git details when updating
5cf5029 2026-08-08 Ensure previous git details are preserved
1444566 2026-08-08 Update new git.issuesLastFetchedAt
4063728 2026-08-08 Remove gitIssuesLastFetchedAt from Alternative
0ba2ddb 2026-08-08 Add new git.autoUpdateDetails and git.autoUpdateIssues
d934db8 2026-08-06 Display Tool archived flag
8096ca3 2026-08-05 Add custom metadata to categories
a2febb1 2026-08-05 Show at least 6 projects with open issues Correclty show number of open issues
f8ef5c5 2026-08-05 Add archived to git Add type to git
033fcd8 2026-08-05 Show projects with open issues on homepage
44487e3 2026-08-04 Fix overflowing issues on new contribute page
66cdf09 2026-08-04 Updated /contribute page
11045e9 2026-08-04 Move FAQ section lower on the page
f42c9b1 2026-08-04 Add private endpoint to udpate git details
a2c1b62 2026-08-04 Add new private endpoint to collect open issues
5811ca3 2026-08-04 Publish "git issue" fields
fccba58 2026-08-04 Add in schema for storing active issues
acd10cc 2026-08-02 .markdown-content changes
81fa960 2026-08-02 Tweak blog pages
c8e847b 2026-08-02 Support markdown in FAQ items
2a3b5fd 2026-08-02 Add new FAQ items to tool
22468ae 2026-08-02 Fix issue for tools without screenshots
0fd46ff 2026-08-01 Add key to screenshots
7393687 2026-08-01 Add new screenshots section

General changes

• I've finally added a screenshot section. I've put this off because it meant having to take screenshots of each project I add. Some projects provide screenshots, others have demos. But more often than not, it means me having to actually run the project and take my own.
• Added a new flag that shows when a project has been archived.
• Upgraded to Astro 7.2.4
• Added a new field that indicates where the project is hosted, previously this was done with a regex. (i.e. Github, Gitlab, self-hosted Gitlab, ...)

Contributions

A completely new page is the contributions page, this displays all open issues from actively tracked projects. Issues are filtered by the "easy", "good first issue" or "help wanted" label.

This currently only works for projects hosted on Github, Gitlab or Codeberg.

Requests

Another completely new page is the request page, this lets users request open source alternatives that they couldn't find before.

I'm hoping that this can become a community driven message board where people recommend software to each other. As well as provide inspiration for developers who are looking to take on a new project.

Reader

The new reader is my attempt to build a "front page" for open source blogs. It pulls in RSS feeds from people who are active in the open source space.

OpenAltFinder Rank

And lastly, perhaps one of the biggest changes, is the introduction of an OpenAltFinder score. This took much longer than expected, as I wasn't quite sure how to tackle this. I wanted to come up with a score to indicate the status of an open source project, but I didn't want the score to negatively impact the project.

Currently the score is calculated based on a few things:

• The license, most permissive and commercial friendly licenses are preferred
• A general health score; stars, forks, open issues, was AI used
• Recency; when was the last commit or release?

Most likely the current implementation will change, but it's a good starting point to iterate on.