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donate: add /donate/thanks/ page and redirect /join to it#51

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sanity merged 1 commit into
mainfrom
fix-join-404-donation-redirect
May 25, 2026
Merged

donate: add /donate/thanks/ page and redirect /join to it#51
sanity merged 1 commit into
mainfrom
fix-join-404-donation-redirect

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@sanity sanity commented May 25, 2026

Summary

A donor reported their PayPal donation returned them to freenet.org/join?donated=yes, which 404s — no /join page has existed on the Hugo site for years.

The return URL is stored inside the PayPal hosted button's saved configuration (button_id EQ9E7DPHB6ETY), not in our page code (only PayPal reference in the repo is the donate link itself, no return= param).

Changes

  • Add hugo-site/content/donate/thanks/_index.md — a proper thank-you page for completed donations.
  • Use Hugo's aliases frontmatter to redirect /join//donate/thanks/, so the existing broken URL works (safety net for cached PayPal receipts and the window before any PayPal-side fix takes effect).

Follow-up (PayPal side, not in this PR)

Set the account-level Auto Return URL in PayPal to https://freenet.org/donate/thanks/ (under Account Settings → Website Payments / Website Preferences). This overrides the per-button return URL embedded in EQ9E7DPHB6ETY so we don't have to hunt for that hosted button in PayPal's UI.

Test plan

  • Local hugo build succeeds.
  • public/join/index.html is generated with a meta-refresh to /donate/thanks/.
  • public/donate/thanks/index.html is generated.
  • After merge, curl -I https://freenet.org/join returns 200 with the redirect HTML, and https://freenet.org/donate/thanks/ renders the page.

[AI-assisted - Claude]

A donor reported that their PayPal donation returned them to
freenet.org/join?donated=yes, which 404s — no /join page has existed
on the Hugo site for years. The return URL is stored inside the
PayPal hosted button's saved configuration (button_id=EQ9E7DPHB6ETY),
not in our page code.

Add a proper /donate/thanks/ thank-you page so future donations can
land on something real once we update the PayPal Auto Return setting
to point to it. Also alias /join/ -> /donate/thanks/ as a safety net
for the in-flight broken URL and any cached PayPal email receipts
that link to /join.

[AI-assisted - Claude]
@sanity sanity merged commit 0e7f46c into main May 25, 2026
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@sanity sanity deleted the fix-join-404-donation-redirect branch May 25, 2026 21:48
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