---
title: Already Confirmed
teaser:
tags: web,clearance,rails,open source
author: Dan Croak
published_on: 2009-08-14
---

If you're using [Clearance](http://github.com/thoughtbot/clearance) and
[Airbrake](http://airbrake.io), chances are you've seen this error:

    Forbidden: confirmed user

You see, in the dead of the New England winter, we got academic about being
[HTTP
fluent](https://thoughtbot.com/blog/post/159805847/forbidden-kisses-http-fluency-in-clearance).
In the process, we made our Rails apps less usable for one edge case:

Users click their confirmation email more than once.

Why (using email as a bookmark, double-clicking) doesn't really matter.
Airbrake has shown us it happens... *a lot*.

## No more errors, no more books

Clearance used to raise a 403 Forbidden and display a blank page. Not a good
user experience. Last week we scratched our itch and changed it to  display a
flash message and redirect somewhere depending on whether the user is signed in
or signed out:

    Already confirmed.

A little less dogma. A little more useful for the user.

Visit our [Open Source page](https://thoughtbot.com/open-source) to learn more about our team's contributions.