GitHub Education renewal link sometimes redirects incorrectly

[Joseph-Edwards]

Code of Conduct

• I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct

What article on docs.github.com is affected?

https://docs.github.com/en/education/explore-the-benefits-of-teaching-and-learning-with-github-education/github-education-for-students/apply-to-github-education-as-a-student

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

The "Expiration and renewals" section explains that, in order to renew a GitHub Education account, you should "return to https://education.github.com/, click your profile picture, then click Your benefits application". If you are signed in, upon clicking this link, you are redirected to https://education.github.com/learner/learn where you are able to follow the instructions.

However, sometimes https://education.github.com/ redirects to https://github.com/education. In this case, when you click on your profile picture, you are met with the standard GitHub toolbar, which doesn't contain the tab "Your benefits application".

It seems like the expected outcome should always be to end up on https://education.github.com/learner/learn.

Additional information

It's not clear to me what determines which page you are redirect to. In a private browser I am redirected to https://github.com/education. In a normal browser where I am logged into my GitHub account, sometimes I am redirected to https://education.github.com/learner/learn, and other times https://github.com/education. This might be a cookies thing but I'm not sure.

[welcome]

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[subatoi]

@Joseph-Edwards 👋 Thanks for raising an issue and linking your PR to it

I don't have an issue approving your PR in principle, but I don't believe this should be happening, and I can't replicate the behaviour you're seeing

Does your plan include access to GitHub Support? Are you able to send some screenshots of what you're seeing and attach them here? I'm sorry if that's frustrating, but I'd rather approach it that way before approving the PR.

Many thanks

[Joseph-Edwards]

Thanks for your fast response @subatoi!

Yes, my plan has access to GitHub support I think, though I've never used it.

After some experimentation, I can reproduce the my issue by first signing out of my GitHub Education account:

Then, if I navigate to https://education.github.com/, I get redirected to https://github.com/education. The landing page for which looks like:

From here, if I click on my profile picture in the top right as instructed by the guide, I see the normal GitHub toolbar:

Conversely, if I follow https://education.github.com/learner/learn, I automatically get signed in.

I hope this clears things up and helps you reproduce the issue. Let me know if there's anything else I can provide to help!

[subatoi]

Interesting—thank you for sending that through.

Yes, my plan has access to GitHub support I think, though I've never used it.

In that event, I'd recommend contacting Support as they will be best positioned to help with this—I'm happy to leave the issue open but I'd prefer to close your PR for now. We can always reopen it, if it turns out it's a change we need to make, rather than something that Support identifies as needing changing internally (eg a bug). Does that sound OK?

[Joseph-Edwards]

Does that sound OK?

That sounds good. I'll contact support shortly and leave another comment here if necessary down the line. Thank you for your help @subatoi.

[subatoi]

No problem! Many thanks for your interest in the GitHub docs

[Joseph-Edwards]

I opened a ticket with GitHub support about the above issue, and got the following:

Upon review, the routing that is taking you to https://github.com/education is correct. If you as a user are not signed in to your account, you will not be able to see your GitHub Education page. In order to be directed to, https://education.github.com/learner/learn you would need to sign in or create an account, and then you will be able to create an application or renew.

In light of this, I think that either the links in the doc or the description of how to renew should be updated to accommodate this.

[subatoi]

@Joseph-Edwards Many thanks for following up about that—I agree we do need to make a change here.

It seems to me that it would be most sensible to update the start of the description to "make sure you are signed in", if you agree?

Separately, I think we may need to make some other edits to different GitHub Education pages, but I can create an issue for that internally.

[Joseph-Edwards]

It seems to me that it would be most sensible to update the start of the description to "make sure you are signed in", if you agree?

Yes, that seems reasonable to me. If there's a docs page/section that explains how to log in to your Education account, it seems appropriate to link that here too.

[subatoi]

Would you like me to reopen your PR for you to amend it to make that change, or would you prefer to start a new one? Or would you prefer that we make that change (we can add you as co-committer if you'd like)

[Joseph-Edwards]

If you could reopen my PR, I'd be happy to make the suggested changes.

[subatoi]

No problem @Joseph-Edwards — reopened for you, thanks!