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Because Mozilla's Persona authentication system is being shut down, all users who wish to contribute to MDN will need to have another means to sign in to MDN by November 1st, 2016. Currently, the only alternative we support is GitHub, so you will need a GitHub account to sign in and edit MDN after that date. This article describes how to add GitHub authentication to your MDN profile.
You must do this prior to November 1st, 2016, or you will no longer have any way to sign in to MDN!
Overview
Adding GitHub authentication to your account isn't hard to do. We'll go into it in detail in a moment, but first, here's a quick list of the steps involved:
- Sign in to your MDN account with Persona.
- Go to the account connections page.
- Add GitHub authentication.
Detailed instructions
Here's a step-by-step guide with details on how to do everything you need to know.
Sign in to your MDN account
- At the top of any MDN page, mouse-over or tap the Sign in box. It displays the authentication methods available, Persona or GitHub.
- Select Persona, and sign in using your usual login credentials. If you get an error about not being recognized, make sure you enter the email address you used when you linked Persona to MDN, rather than whatever your current email address may be. If you still have problems, see Persona doesn't remember me.
Go to the "account connections" page
There are two ways to get to the account connections page.
The first is to simply click the link below.
Otherwise, do the following:
- Click your username at the top of any MDN page. (It is in the position where the Sign in box was when you were not logged in.) This takes you to your profile page.
- Open the "gear" menu, and click Account connections.
Add GitHub authentication
You're now on the "Account connections" page, which lists the external accounts you've already linked to your MDN profile. If GitHub is already listed, congratulations! You're ready to go! But test it to be sure you remember your password, by signing out of MDN and signing back in using your GitHub credentials.
If GitHub isn't already listed, then near the bottom of the page, look below the list of already-linked external accounts. There you'll find a section called Connect a new account, which lists the types of accounts you can connect to your MDN profile. It looks something like this:
To add GitHub:
- Click Connect with GitHub. MDN will contact GitHub to request permission to link the accounts. If you're not already signed in to GitHub, you'll be asked to do so:
- If you have two-factor authentication enabled on your GitHub account, you'll be asked to enter your authentication code:
- Now that you're signed in to your GitHub account, you'll be asked to authorize the link between GitHub and MDN (unless you already have this authorization on file for some reason). This page is shown below.
Click the green Authorize application button to grant permission for your MDN profile to access your GitHub account. If the GitHub account is successfully linked to your MDN profile, you'll see this message:
Not only can you now use GitHub to sign in to MDN, but you're actually already signed in using your GitHub authentication! You're now ready for the Persona shutdown. Be sure to update any password managers you may have installed, if necessary.
Troubleshooting
If you run into problems while trying to add your GitHub account to your profile, hopefully the troubleshooting tips below will help. If they don't, please don't hesitate to ask us for help on the #mdn IRC channel (add other options).
Error: Could not find profile matching account
If you try to add your GitHub account to your profile and get the error "Could not find profile matching account," it can mean a few different things. If you have multiple accounts on your GitHub account, there may be some confusion; GitHub may not report the expected email address to MDN during the account pairing attempt, which will result in this error. Other glitches in the process may also result in the same error message.
One way to work around this problem: open a new private window in your browser; in Firefox, for example, choose "New Private Window" in the File menu (or press Ctrl+Shift+P [Cmd-Shift-P on Mac]). Browse to MDN there, sign into your MDN account, then try again to add your GitHub account to your profile as covered above.
Also, be sure that when you try to log into Persona to
My GitHub authorization is not displayed on the Account Connections page.
That might be a caching issue. Reloading the page or logging out and logging in again should solve the problem.
Persona doesn't remember me
If you try to log into Persona so you can add a GitHub login to your MDN account and get told "Your email address is new to us," this is likely because it's been long enough since you last logged into Persona that they've deleted your email address from their system. This happens after some period of time; the Persona login window looks like this in that situation:
If this happens, you need to simply follow Persona's instructions to create a new password for that email address. MDN doesn't care about this process; the fact that your email address matches up is all that matters. A confirmation email will be sent to verify that you own the email address, probably from [email protected]. If you have spam filtering, it may be sent to your spam folder.
Once you've finished the process of setting the password for the email address you used to log into MDN, your access to MDN will be restored. Then you can follow the steps in Detailed instructions above to add your GitHub login to your MDN account.