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Key: DOC
Name: Confluence 2.8
Description: Documentation for latest version of Confluence wiki: Installation
Guide, User Guide, Admin Guide and other technical documentation
Creator (Creation Date): mike@atlassian.com (Dec 17, 2003)
Last Modifier (Mod. Date): smaddox (Apr 10, 2008)
Available Pages
• Administration Guide Attachments Directory
• Confluence Documentation Home
• Administrators Guide
• Administration
• Cache Statistics
• Changing time of Daily Backup
• Confluence Data Directory Configuration
• Confluence home directory contents
• Content Index Administration
• Finding Unused Spaces
• Important Directories and Files
• Confluence Home Directory
• Confluence Installation Directory
• Manually Backing Up The Site
• Configuring Daily Backups
• User Submitted Backup & Restore Scripts
• Migrate Or Clone Confluence Between Servers
• Moving Confluence Between Servers
• Rebuilding the Ancestor Table
• Restoring a Site
• Restoring a Space
• Changing the version of a space backup
• Restoring a Test Instance from Production
• Restoring Data from other Backups
• Restoring Data from the Administration Console
• Retrieve file attachments from a backup
• Troubleshooting failed XML site backups
• Troubleshooting XML backups that fail on restore
• Viewing and Editing License Details
• Viewing System Information
• Live Monitoring Using the JMX Interface
• Site Statistics
• Cluster Administration page
• Cluster Troubleshooting
• Configuring Confluence
Recently Updated
by Edwin Dawson (14 minutes ago)
(hidden draft) Viewing Comments
by Sarah Maddox (17 minutes ago)
Re: Moving Pages within a Space
by David Loeng (21 minutes ago)
Known Issues For SQL Server
by Sarah Maddox (55 minutes ago)
Confluence 2.8 Screen and Menu Changes
by Agnes Ro (an hour ago)
Web UI Plugins
by David Peterson (2 hours ago)
Re: Children Display Macro
by Kevin Tran (2 hours ago)
Known Issues for PostgreSQL
by Matt Ryall (3 hours ago)
Confluence 2.8 Upgrade Notes
by Tomi Strugar (3 hours ago)
Re: Moving Pages within a Space
by Anitha R (3 hours ago)
Configuring Confluence
Data and Backups
System Administration
Importing Data
Mail Configuration Download
Security
User Management
Design and Layout
Integrating Confluence and JIRA
Plugins and Macros
Performance Tuning
Character Encoding
Support
You can download the Confluence Admin Guide in
PDF, HTML or XML formats.
Additional Resources
• Cache Statistics
• Changing time of Daily Backup
• Confluence Data Directory Configuration
• Confluence home directory contents
• Content Index Administration
• Finding Unused Spaces
• Important Directories and Files
° Confluence Home Directory
° Confluence Installation Directory
Confluence provides statistics about its internal caches that allow you to track the size and hit ratio
of each cache and tune it for better performance (if necessary). See Performance Tuning for more
information.
To view the cache statistics, go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Cache Statistics' in the left
panel. There you will find a list of all objects cached within Confluence. Click on the 'Advanced' tab for
more detail. Below is an example for one of the most frequently used caches, the Content Object cache.
The clustered versions of Confluence use distributed cache called Tangosol Coherence.
Performance Tuning
If you need to tune your application when under high usage, you may like to review this document for
suggestions.
RELATED TOPICS
Cache Statistics
Viewing and Editing License Details
Viewing System Information
By default, Confluence runs its daily backup at 2.00 AM. You can configure Confluence to perform the
backup at a time that is best suited to you or your organisational needs.
The time zone is taken from the server on which Confluence is running. To check the time according
to the server, go to the 'Administration Console', click 'System Information' in the left-hand panel
and look at the 'System Time'.
Confluence uses Quartz for scheduling periodic jobs. To change the time of your daily backup, you will
need to edit the Quartz configuration.
3. The string '0 0 2 * * ?' sets up a Cron Trigger for the job to run at the zeroth second of the
zeroth minute of the 2nd hour, every day of every month, every day of the week.
4. Re-jar the file, either with a zip utility (change the title of .zip back to .jar) or a java command.
5. You can set a new time by editing this string. Note that the date and time format in this
configuration file is in this order:
Second minute hour day
6. Restart Confluence.
For example, to set the new time to twenty past ten PM, change the string to '0 20 22 * * ?'.
If you wanted to back up only once a week, for example, at midnight on Sundays, you would change the
string to '0 0 0 ? * SUN'.
For complete details on the formatting of the cron string, please see http://www.opensymphony.com/
quartz/api/org/quartz/CronTrigger.html.
RELATED TOPICS
The home directory defines the location of the directory where Confluence will store it's data, including
attachments, indexes and backups. Administrators can set this location by defining a value for the file
<MY-INSTALL>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties. To find what your home
directory is currently set to, open this file and check the confluence.home property. It is unset on new
installations.
Windows Configuration
C:\confluence\data
confluence.home=C:/confluence/data
Note that all backslashes (\) are written as forward slashes (/).
UNIX/Linux/Mac Configuration
On any UNIX-based system, the property is defined using the normal directory syntax:
confluence.home=/var/confluence/
Symbolic links
If your confluence.home directory contains a symbolic link, you must define the absolute path.
Please note that there can be no symbolic links within the confluence.home directory. If disk space
is an issue, place the entire confluence.home directory on a disk partition where there is enough
space.
The absolute path of generated files (such as exports) is compared with the absolute path of the
confluence.home directory when constructing URLs. When a sub-directory has a different path, the
URL will be incorrect, and you may receive "Page not found" errors. These measures are in place to
prevent "directory traversal" attacks.
The Confluence configuration file: confluence-cfg.xml inside the home directory may contain references
to the original location of your Confluence home. You will need to edit this file to update these references
to also point to the new location. The two properties in this file that need to change are:
• daily.backup.dir if you have not configured your backups to be placed elsewhere already
• hibernate.connection.url if you are using the embedded HSQL database.
This file is the most critical file in the Confluence home directory. It contains all of the information
necessary for Confluence to start up such as:
• Product license
• Context path
• Database details such as location and connection pool settings
• Paths to important directories
attachments
This directory contains every version of each attachment stored in Confluence. This directory is not used
when Confluence is configured to store attachments in the database. Attachments are always stored in
the database in clustered instances of Confluence.
/attachments/PAGE_ID/ATTACHMENT_ID/VERSION
An alternative directory may be specified for attachment storage by setting the attachments.dir
property in confluence.cfg.xml
backups
Confluence will place its daily backup archives in this directory, as well as any manually generated
backups. Backup files in this directory take the following form:
daily-backup-YYYY_MM_DD.zip
An alternative directory may be specified for backups by setting the daily.backup.dir property in
confluence.cfg.xml.
bundled-plugins
Recent versions of Confluence ship with a set of bundled plugins. These are plugins written by the
Atlassian and the Confluence community that we think provide useful and broadly applicable functionality
in Confluence. The {{bundled-plugins)) directory is where Confluence will unpack its bundled plugins
when it starts up. This directory is refreshed on every restart, so removing a plugin from this directory
will not uninstall the plugin; it will simply be replaced the next time Confluence starts up.
database
This is where Confluence stores its database when configured to run with the HSQL embedded database
and as such contains all Confluence runtime data. Instances configured to run using an external database
such as MySQL will not use this directory.
index
This is where Confluence stores its indexes for rapid retrieval of often used data. The Confluence index is
used heavily by the application for content searching and recently updated lists and as such is critical for
a running Confluence instance. It is important to note however that should the data in this directory be
An alternative directory may be specified for the index by setting the lucene.index.dir property in
confluence.cfg.xml. As this is the most heavily accessed directory in the Confluence home directory
you might want to consider hosting it on the fastest disk available. It would also be useful if the disk
holding the Confluence index was not heavily used by any other application to reduce access contention.
plugin-cache
As of Confluence 2.3, all Confluence plugins are now stored in the Confluence database. To allow for
quicker access to classes contained within the plugin JARs, Confluence will cache these plugins in the
plugin-cache directory. This directory is updated as plugins are installed and uninstalled from the
system and is completely repopulated from the database every time Confluence is restarted. As such,
removing plugins from this directory does not uninstall them.
resources
The resources directory stores any space logos used in your Confluence instance. For each space with a
space logo, there is a directory within resources named after the space's key. That directory contains the
space's logo.
temp
The temp directory is used for various runtime functions such as exporting, importing, file upload and
indexing. As the name suggests, and file in this directory is of temporary importance and is only used
during runtime. This directory can be safely emptied when Confluence is offline.
An alternative directory may be specified for temporary data by setting the webwork.multipart.saveDir
property in confluence.cfg.xml.
thumbnails
When Confluence generates a thumbnail of an image (for example when the gallery macro is used), the
resulting thumbnail is stored in this directory for quicker retrieval on subsequent accesses. This directory
is essentially a thumbnail cache, and deleting files from this directory simply means the thumbnail will
have to be regenerated on the next access.
config
The config directory is used to store data used by Confluence's bandana data persistence framework.
This system is used by Confluence to store the global instance settings and is used by various plugins for
their own configuration and data persistence needs. Confluence versions 2.3 and later store these data in
the Confluence database and do not use this directory.
The most important file in this directory is the confluence-global.bandana.xml file. This file is used to
store all of the settings from the Administration console in Confluence.
plugins
The plugins directory is where Confluence stores all installed plugin JARs. It is possible to install and
remove plugins by placing and deleting plugin JARs from this directory.
This properties file contains various formatting information such as the formats for decimal numbers and
dates used in the Confluence user interface. These configuration data where relocated to the Confluence
database from Confluence 2.3 and onwards.
The Content Index powers Confluence's search functionality and is also used for a number of related
functions such as building email threads in the mail archive, the Space Activity feature and lists of
recently-updated content. The Gliffy Plugin also uses the index for some functionality.
For reasons of efficiency, content is not immediately added to the index. New and modified Confluence
content is first placed in a queue, and the queue is processed once every minute (by default).
To see information about your Confluence instance's content indexing, go to the 'Administration Console'
and click 'Content Indexing' under the heading 'Administration' in the left-hand panel.
On this page:
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Content Indexing' under the heading 'Administration' in
the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Rebuild Search Index'.
Slow Reindexing
Does the reindexing take a long time to complete? The length of time depends on the following factors:
If you are running an older version of Confluence and find that the index rebuild is not progressing,
you may need to shut down Confluence, and restart it with the following Java system property set:
bucket.indexing.threads.fixed=1. This will cause the re-indexing to happen in a single thread and be
much more stable (but slower).
http://localhost:8080/admin/indexbrowser.jsp
4. You will be asked "Which index would you like to browse?"
5. Type in the path of your index directory. By default, this is located at <Confluence Home
directory/index>.
For example, c:\confluence\data\index.
6. You should see a list of indexed file names.
RELATED TOPICS
directory^adminhome.gif!
Sometimes, you want to know what is not being used. It's great to know what's getting most attention,
but what about stagnant pages, or even entire spaces that are no longer active?
While viewing space activity and the Global Statistics plugin can provide hints, they still don't always
provide enough detail. The simple way is to go directly to the database. We recommend DbVisualizer, and
have basic instructions for connecting it to HSQLDB.
The following query identifies the last date on which content was modified in each space within a single
Confluence instance:
It returns a list of spacenames, and the last date and time at which any content was added or changed.
Alternatively, this one simply identifies spaces whose content hasn't changed since a specified date:
SELECT spaces.spacename
FROM content, spaces
WHERE content.spaceid = spaces.spaceid
GROUP BY spaces.spacename
HAVING MAX(content.lastmoddate) < '2006-10-10';
You can try the Chart plugin in combination with the SQL plugin to give more visually attractive results.
The 'Confluence Installation directory' is the directory into which the Confluence application files and
libraries have been unpacked (unzipped) when Confluence was installed. Confluence does not modify or
store any data in this directory. This is different from the Confluence Home Directory.
The temp directory is configured in the Java runtime and some Confluence components write temporary
files or lockfiles into this directory.
To change the location of this directory, you should start the Java Virtual Machine in which confluence is
running with the argument:
-Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/your/own/temp/directory.
The Confluence Home directory is the folder where Confluence stores its configuration information, search
indexes and page attachments. If you're using the embedded HSQLDB database supplied for evaluation
purposes, the database files are also stored in this directory. You can also read about the contents of the
Home directory. The Confluence Home directory is different from the Confluence Installation Directory.
Administrators can expect the Confluence Home Directory to grow quite large in a busy site.
The location of this directory is configured by the system administrator during installation (see
confluence-init.properties above).
• confluence.cfg.xml : Confluence's core configuration file; includes the configuration for connecting
to its database.
• default-formatting.properties : Some auxiliary configuration data concerning default number
and date formats.
• attachments/ : All file attachments in the Confluence site are stored under this directory. This is the
only place Confluence keeps attachment files.
• backups/ : If Confluence is configured to produce daily backups, these are kept in this directory.
Administrators should occasionally delete old or unwanted backups from this directory to prevent it
from growing too large.
Database
All other data — page contents, links, archived mail and so on — is kept in the database. If you have
configured Confluence to use the embedded HSQL database, the database will store its files under
database/ in the Confluence Home Directory. Otherwise, the database management system you are
connecting to is responsible for where and how your remaining data is stored.
Tip
All of Confluence's persistent data is stored either in the Confluence Home Directory, or the
database. If you have backup copies of both of these, taken at the same time, you will be able to
restore Confluence from them (see Restoring Data from other Backups).
RELATED TOPICS
!Administration Guide
Attachments directory^dochome.gif!
Often in the documentation, you'll see a reference to the 'Confluence Home directory'.
When Confluence first starts up, it reads the confluence-init.properties file to determine where to
look for the Home directory.
RELATED TOPICS
The 'Confluence Installation directory' is the directory into which the Confluence application files and
libraries have been unpacked (unzipped) when Confluence was installed. Confluence does not modify or
store any data in this directory. This is different from the Confluence Home Directory.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence is configured to make a daily backup of your data and store it as a zipped XML file in the
'backups' folder under the Confluence Home Directory. A System Administrator can also manually back up
the data from the Administration Console.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
Consider an alternative backup strategy if your Confluence site is large or you are encountering
problems with your automated backup.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Backup & Restore' in the 'Administration' section of the
left-hand panel.
2. Select 'Archive to backups folder' to store a copy of the backup in the same folder as Confluence's
daily backups. (If you do not archive the backup it will be made available for you to download, and
then deleted from the server after 24 hours).
3. Select 'Backup attachments' to include attachments in your backup.
4. Click 'Backup'.
Please note that this process will take a few minutes.
5. Once the backup is completed, you will be prompted to download the zipped backup file.
If you are running Confluence behind Apache and are facing timeout errors, please consider creating
the export directly from Tomcat, instead of going through Apache. This will speed up the process
and prevent timeouts.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence backs up your data on a daily basis into a zipped XML file. By default, the backup is
performed at 2.00 a.m. and the backup files are stored in the backups folder under the Confluence Home
Directory.
The time zone is taken from the server on which Confluence is running. To check the time according
to the server, go to the 'Administration Console', click 'System Information' in the left-hand panel
and look at the 'System Time'. You can change the time of the daily backup.
Consider an alternative backup strategy if your Confluence site is large or you are encountering
problems with your automated backup.
The default naming convention for the backup files is 'daily-backup-yyyy_MM_dd'. Confluence can write
backups to both local and mapped network drives.
From the Administration Console, you can:
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the Administration Console and click 'Daily Backup Admin' in the 'Configuration' section.
2. Click the 'Edit' button on the 'Daily Backup Administration' screen.
3. Now you can do the following:
• To disable backups — Select 'Disable'.
• To specify an alternate path to store backup files — Select 'Custom' and then enter the path.
The directory must be on either a local drive or a mounted network drive.
• To exclude attachments from backups — Select 'Off' beside 'Backup Attachments'. By default,
this is 'On'.
• To use a different naming prefix format — Enter the new format in the 'Backup File Prefix' input
field.
• To use a different date format — Enter the date format in the 'Backup File Date Pattern' input
field using the syntax described in this document from Sun.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
This script examines backup filename and deletes them if necessary, it may need to be edited.
'If you want 3 day old files to be deleted then insert 3 next to Date - "your number here"
'This script will search out and delete files with this string in them ".2005-12-04-" This of
course depends on the number you enter.
'You can always do a wscript.echo strYesterday or strFileName to see what the script thinks you are
searching for.
dtmYesterday = Date - 3
strYear = Year(dtmYesterday)
strMonth = Month(dtmYesterday)
If Len(strMonth) = 1 Then
strMonth = "0" & strMonth
End If
strDay = Day(dtmYesterday)
If Len(strDay) = 1 Then
strDay = "0" & strDay
End If
strYesterday = strYear & "-" & strMonth & "-" & strDay
Old XML backups can be deleted automatically by inserting a nightly or weekly automation script or cron
similar to the following:
Or, using the older form of the tail command if your system does not support the standard form:
Old XML backups can be deleted automatically by inserting a nightly or weekly automation script or cron
similar to the following. Set the BACKUP_DIR and DAYS_TO_RETAIN variables to appropriate values for
your site. Between runs, more files than DAYS_TO_RETAIN builds up.
#!/bin/sh
#!/bin/bash
CNFL=/var/confluence
CNFL_BACKUP=/backup/cnflBackup/`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`
rm -rf $CNFL/temp/*
mkdir $CNFL_BACKUP
mysqldump -uroot -p<password> confluence|gzip > $CNFL_BACKUP/confluence.mysql.data.gz
tar -cjvf $CNFL_BACKUP/data.bzip $CNFL > $CNFL_BACKUP/homedir.status
Related Topics
This page tells you how to copy a Confluence instance from one server to another. For example, you may
want to transfer your current production snapshot to a test server as permitted in the licence agreement.
1. Stop Confluence.
2. Make a copy of your Confluence installation directory.
3. Make a copy of your Confluence home directory.
4. Use your database administration tool to access your external database and create a Confluence
database export.
5. Start Confluence.
1. If you have Standalone Confluence and wish to use it on the target server then you can drop in the
installation directory. Otherwise, you will need to follow our Confluence Installation Guide and set up
the new installation. Make sure to use the same Confluence and application server versions.
2. Set up the database to be an exact clone of the original:
a. Set up the same database version and driver.
b. Set up the database user to have the same permissions as the original.
c. Import the Confluence database export.
3. Place the copy of your Confluence home directory onto the target server.
4. If the home directory is in a different location, go to the Confluence installation directory and edit ..
\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\confluence-init.properties. The home directory is set under
confluence.home.
5. To modify any database connection information, go to the Confluence home directory and edit
confluence.cfg.xml. The connection URL is set under hibernate.connection.url.
6. Start Confluence.
RELATED TOPICS
Adminstrators may need to move a Confluence instance from one server to another for upgrades or
downtime.
If you are planning to switch databases, application servers or Confluence versions, perform the
transfer and test that it is successful separately to any other changes.
1. On the original server, create zips of the Confleunce install and home directories. Copy the zips to
the new server.
2. On the new server, unzip the install and home directories. Windows users should avoid unzipping
with the Windows built-in extractor, instead use Winzip or the free 7Zip. If you are changing the
location of the home directory, open the Confluence install\confluence\WEB-INF\classes directory
and edit confluence-init.properties by changing the line starting with 'confluence.home='.
3. This next step is dependent on your database:
• For users of the internal database, the content is stored inside the home directory. You should
consider switching to an external database after the transfer is successful.
• For databases stored on another server, change the user account or datasource permissions
so that the new server has the same network access permissions as the original. Then
confirm from the new server that the hostname can be resolved and is listening for database
connections on the expected port.
• For external databases stored locally:
A. On the original server, create a manual database backup.
B. Copy the database backup to the new server.
C. On the new server, install or upgrade the database version to match the original server.
D. Import the database backup.
E. Add a database user account with the same username and password as the original.
F. Provide the user with the full access to the imported mdatabase.
G. Use a database administration tool to confirm that the user can login from the localhost.
4. If you are using internal user management, skip this step. For users who have JIRA or LDAP
integration, provide the new server with network or local access to the same hosts as the original.
5. If you configured Confluence as a Windows service, repeat those instructions.
1. Create a backup from Confluence by going to 'Administration' -> 'Backup & Restore', checking the
'Backup Attachments' and selecting 'Backup'.
2. Identify the current version of Confluence your are using, displayed at the bottom of each
Confluence page.
3. Download the same version as you are currently using to the new server, which may be the current
Confluence release, or an older version.
4. Using the same version, follow the Upgrading Confluence guide.
In Confluence, the ancestor table controls the breadcrumb navigation at the top of each Confluence page.
Occassionally, the ancestor table will become out of sync. When this happens, you can rebuild the table to
restore everything to normal.
http://yoursite/admin/permissions/rebuild_ancestor_table.action
RELATED TOPICS
CAUTION: Restoring a backup of an entire confluence site (consisting of multiple spaces) will:
• Wipe out all Confluence content in the database. Ensure that your database is backed up.
• Log you out after the restore process. Make sure you know your login details contained in the
data being restored.
Confluence supports backward compatibility for site backups. (But not for space backups). You can
only successfully restore backups of a site from an older version of Confluence to a newer version of
Confluence. For example, if you create a site backup in Confluence 2.4.3, it cannot be restored into a
Confluence 2.2.2 instance. It can however, be restored into 2.4.5 or 2.5.x, because 2.4.5 and 2.5.x are
newer versions of Confluence.
1. Restore a site from the Confluence Setup Wizard: This restores the data into a new instance of
Confluence.
2. Restore a site from the Administration Console: This restores data into the current instance of
Confluence.
If your daily backup zips cannot be restored for whatever reason, but you have backups of both your
database and your Confluence home directory, then it is still possible to restore from these backups.
Selective space restore not possible
You cannot select a single space to restore from the entire site backup when the backup contains
more than one space.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence 2.8
Manually Backing Up The Site
Restoring a Site
Restoring a Space
Restoring Data from the Administration Console
Confluence only supports forward compatibility and backward compatibility for individual space
import and export when executed within the same major version of Confluence instances.
This means that a space export created in a newer major version of Confluence cannot be imported
into an older major version of Confluence. For example, if you create a space export in Confluence
2.4.5, it cannot be imported into a Confluence 2.2.2 instance. It can be however imported into
2.4.6. (because 2.2.2 and 2.4.5 are two different 'major' versions). Similarly, a space export created
in 2.2.2 can not be imported into 2.4.5. However, it can be restored in 2.2.10. (Since 2.2.2 and
2.2.10 belong to the same major version release )
If such an operation is carried out, an error message similar to the one below will be displayed and
the import action will be stopped.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
To restore a space,
Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Backup and Restore' in the 'Administration' section of the
left-hand panel.
This method does not apply when restoring spaces from an Atlassian Hosted Confluence to a
standalone instance. Please refer to the alternative method, if migrating from Hosted to Standalone.
As described in the warning above, you cannot restore a space directly between two major versions. i.e.
an individual space backup from 2.2.x cannot be imported into a 2.3.x.
Whilst there is presently no functionality in Confluence that allows you to do so, there is however a
manual workaround to this problem.
Alternative workaround
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence 2.8
Manually Backing Up The Site
Restoring a Site
Restoring a Space
Restoring Data from the Administration Console
Confluence prevents the import of space backups which aren't from the same major version. The reason
for this is that any schema change between the export and imported version of Confluence will cause the
import to fail, leaving you with an incomplete import. Even worse, the failure can be database-dependent,
so it may work fine on one particular database but your backup will fail to import later.
Do not import a modified space backup on a production server. Import the modified space backup
on a test server, then export from the test server to create a pristine space backup for the new
version.
This will allow you to import a backup into a test instance of Confluence. After checking the imported
space for errors, export it cleanly from the test server and import the fresh backup into your production
server.
If your import fails on the test server due to Hibernate errors, this indicates a schema incompatibility and
cannot be worked around. You will need to restore your entire site on an old version of Confluence, and
export the space from there. See the last section of Restoring a Space for details.
Many Confluence administrators will have a production instance running the "live" version of Confluence,
as well as a test instance for testing upgrades and so on. In this situation, it's quite common that the two
instances are running different versions of Confluence. This document describes how to copy the data
from a production instance to a test instance, where the production version may be different to the test
version.
Before proceeding with this guide, ensure you have read and understood the normal procedure for
upgrading Confluence.
Essentially, we are copying both the production home directory and database to the test instance. We
then update the database details on the test instance to point to the test database, leaving all other
instance metadata (most importantly the Confluence build number) the same as production.
Before starting your test instance, you need to do the following steps to ensure no contact with
production systems.
To ensure no contact with external systems, you will need to disable both inbound and outbound mail
services.
Change the 'SELECT *' to a 'DELETE' in the above queries once you are sure you want to remove the
specified accounts.
Once this is done, you can start your test instance without any mails being sent or retrieved. Think
carefully about other plugins which may access production systems (SQL macro, etc.). These should be
disabled promptly after starting the test instance.
See also
Upgrading Confluence
Typically, Confluence data is restored from the Administration Console or from the Confluence Setup
Wizard.
If you are experiencing problems restoring from an zipped XML backup file, it is still possible to restore
provided you have:
Instructions for this method of restoring differ depending on whether you are using the embedded
database or an external database (like Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL or Postgres).
Embedded Database
If you are running against the embedded database, the database is located inside the database folder of
your Confluence Home Directory. Hence, all you need to do is:
External Database
If you're using an external database, you need to:
1. prepare backups of your home directory and database (preferably backups that are dated the
same). That is, make sure the home directory is accessible on the filesystem and the database
available to be connected to.
2. if this database happens to have a different name, or is on a different server, you need to modify
the jdbc url in the confluence.cfg.xml file inside the Confluence Home Directory. The value of this
property is specified as hibernate.connection.url.
3. unpack the Confluence distribution and point the confluence-init.properties file to the home
directory.
RELATED TOPICS
Use this option if you want to restore data into your current instance of Confluence. If you want to restore
data into a new instance, follow the instructions here.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
CAUTION: Restoring a backup of an entire confluence site (consisting of multiple spaces) will:
• Wipe out all Confluence content in the database. Ensure that your database is backed up.
• Log you out after the restore process. Make sure you know your login details contained in the
data being restored.
Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Backup and Restore' in the 'Administration' section of the
left-hand panel.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence 2.8
Manually Backing Up The Site
Restoring a Site
Restoring a Space
Restoring Data from the Administration Console
File attachments on pages can be retrieved from a backup without needing to import the the backup into
Confluence. This is useful for recovering attachments that have been deleted by users.
Both daily and manual backups allow this, as long as the 'Include attachments' property was set. Users
wanting to restore pages, spaces or sites should check out the Administrators Guide instead.
Before following the instructions for recovering attachments, please review how backups store file and
page information.
Page attachments are stored under the attachments directory by page and attachment id. Here is an
example listing:
Inside the attachment directory, each numbered directory inside is one page, and the numbered file
inside is one attachment. The directory number is the page id, and the file number is the attachment id.
For example, the file \attachments\98\10001 is an attachment with page id 98 and attachment id 10001.
You can read entities.xml to link those numbers to the original filename. Entities.xml also links each page
id to the page title.
Inside the entities.xml is an Attachment object written in XML. In this example, the page id is 98, the
attachment id is 10001 and the filename is myimportantfile.doc. The rest of the XML can be ignored:
This XML describes a page. In this example, the page id is 98 and the title is Editing Your Files. The rest
of the XML can be ignored:
Best if you know each filename you need to restore, especially if you want just a few files:
Best if you have a small backup but want to restore many or all the attachments inside:
To obtain detailed information about lost attachments, location, name and type of the attachments,
you may use the findattachments script
Problem Solution
Exception while creating backup Follow instructions below
Exception while importing backup Follow Troubleshooting XML backups that fail on
restore instead
The errors may be caused by a slightly corrupt database. If you're seeing errors such as 'Couldn't
backup database data' in your logs, this guide will help you correct the error on your own. We strongly
recommend that you backup your database and your Confluence home directory beforehand, so that you
can restore your site from those if required. If you are unfamiliar with SQL, we suggest you contact your
database administrator for assistance.
To work out where the data corruption or problems are, increase the status information reported during
backup, then edit the invalid database entry:
1. Stop Confluence.
2. If you have an external database, use a database administration tool to create a manual database
backup.
3. Backup your Confluence home directory. You will be able to restore your whole site using this and
the database backup.
4. Open the my_confluence_install/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties and add this
to the bottom and save:
log4j.logger.com.atlassian.confluence.importexport.impl.XMLDatabinder=DEBUG, confluencelog
log4j.additivity.com.atlassian.confluence.importexport.impl.XMLDatabinder=false
5. Find your Confluence output logs. On standalone, this is the /logs directory under your Confluence
install. Move or delete all existing Confluence logs to makes it easier to find the relevant logging
output.
6. Restart Confluence and login.
7. Begin a backup so that the error reoccurs.
8. You must now check your log files to find out what object could not be converted into XML format.
Open my_confluence_install/logs/catalina.out. Scroll to the bottom of the file.
9. Do a search for 'ObjectNotFoundException'. You should see an error similar to this:
this indicates that the Primary Key constraint 'PK_OS_PROPERTYENTRY_314D4EA8' has duplicate entries
in table 'OS_PROPERTYENTRY'.
You can locate the constraint key referring to 'PK_OS_PROPERTYENTRY_314D4EA8' in your table
'OS_PROPERTYENTRY' and locate any duplicate values in it and remove them, to ensure the "PRIMARY
KEY" remains unique. An example query to list duplicate entries in the 'OS_PROPERTYENTRY' table is:
1. If you are using the embedded database, be aware that it is bundled for evaluation purposes and
does not offer full transactional integrity in the event of sudden power loss, which is why an external
database is recommended for production use. You should migrate to an external database.
2. If you are using an older version of Confluence than the latest, you should consider upgrading at
this point.
RELATED TOPICS
Problem Solution
Exception while creating backup Follow Troubleshooting failed XML site backups
instead
Exception while importing backup Follow instructions below
The errors may be caused by a slightly corrupt database. You will need to find the XML backup file entry
that is violating the DB rules, modify the entry and recreate the XML backup:
1. On the instance being restored, follow the instructions to disable batched updates (for simpler
debugging), log SQL queries and log SQL queries with parameters at Enabling detailed SQL logging.
2. Once all three changes have been made, restart Confluence
3. Attempt another restore
4. Once the restore fails, check your log files to find out what object could not be converted into XML
format. For Confluence Standalone users, check your Confluence install directory under the /logs/
and check both atlassian-confluence.log and catalina.out file. The correct file will contain SQL
debug output.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the file and identify the last error relating to a violation of the database
constraint. For example:
This example indicates a row in your attachment table with ID = 38 that has a null title.
6. Go to the server that the backup was created on. You must have a copy of the database from which
the backup was created. If you do not have this, use a DBA tool to restore a manual backup of the
database.
7. Open a DBA tool and connect to the original database instance and scan the table names in the
schema. You will have to modify a row in one of these tables
8. To work out which table, open catalina.out, check the first line of the exception. To work out what
table an object maps to in the database, here's a rough guide:
• Pages, blogposts, comments --> CONTENT table
• attachments --> ATTACHMENTS table
9. To correct the example error, go to the attachment table and find that attachment object with id 38.
This will have a a null title. Give a title using the other attachments titles as a guide. You may have
a different error and should modify the database accordingly.
10. Once the entry has been corrected, create the XML backup again
11. Import the backup into the new version
12. If the import succeeds, revert the changes made in your SQL logging to re-enable disable batched
updates and turn off log SQL queries and log SQL queries with parameters
13. Restart Confluence
this indicates that the Primary Key constraint 'PK_OS_PROPERTYENTRY_314D4EA8' has duplicate entries
in table 'OS_PROPERTYENTRY'.
You can locate the constraint key referring to 'PK_OS_PROPERTYENTRY_314D4EA8' in your table
'OS_PROPERTYENTRY' and locate any duplicate values in it and remove them, to ensure the "PRIMARY
KEY" remains unique. An example query to list duplicate entries in the 'OS_PROPERTYENTRY' table is:
1. If you are using the embedded database, be aware that it is bundled for evaluation purposes and
does not offer full transactional integrity in the event of sudden power loss, which is why an external
database is recommended for production use. You should migrate to an external database.
2. If you are using an older version of Confluence than the latest, you should consider upgrading at
this point.
RELATED TOPICS
• How many users your Confluence instance is licensed to support, and how many are currently
registered.
Note: The number of registered users only includes users who have 'can use Confluence' permission.
Deactivated users are not included.
Click the 'Refresh' button to make sure you see the latest count.
• What type of license you have (e.g. Commercial, Academic, Community).
• How much time remains in your one-year support and upgrades period (for full licenses) or 30-day
trial (for trial licenses).
• Your server ID, which:
° is generated when you install Confluence for the first time
° exists for the life of the Confluence instance
° survives an upgrade
° is held in the database
° is not bound to a specific license
° is the same for all servers in a cluster.
From Confluence release 2.5.5, the 'License Details' page shows Server ID instead of License ID.
1. Log into Confluence as a user with Confluence Administrator or System Administrator permissions.
2. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'License Details' under the heading 'Administration in
the left-hand panel.
To look up your license details on the Atlassian website, please log in to my.atlassian.com
1. Log into Confluence as a user with Confluence Administrator or System Administrator permissions.
2. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'License Details' under the heading 'Administration in
the left-hand panel.
3. Enter your new license details into the 'License' field and click the 'Save' button.
If you are running a Confluence Cluster, you will need to:
• update each server's Confluence license separately.
• ensure that the new license has enough nodes to cover all servers that are currently running
in your cluster. (To check the number of active servers in your cluster, see the Cluster
Administration page.)
RELATED TOPICS
The System Information screen provides information about Confluence's configuration, and the
environment in which Confluence has been deployed. Your system configuration information is helpful to
us when diagnosing errors you may face using Confluence. If you file a support request or bug report, the
more detail you can provide about your installation and environment the faster we will be able to help.
To view your system information, go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'System Configuration' in
the 'Administration' section.
The handy Memory Graph helps you keep track of Confluence's memory usage.
RELATED TOPICS
• Cache Statistics
• Site Statistics
• Viewing and Editing License Details
• Viewing and Managing Installed Plugins
• Live Monitoring Using the JMX Interface
What is JMX?
JMX (Java Management eXtensions) is a technology for monitoring and managing Java applications. JMX
uses objects called MBeans (Managed Beans) to expose data and resources from your application.
By default, Confluence uses the Apache Tomcat web server. To use JMX, you must enable it on your
Tomcat server, by carrying out the steps under the Apache Tomcat documentation, entitled Enabling JMX
Remote. With those steps completed, restart your Tomcat server.
You need to use a JMX client in order to view the JMX output from Confluence. JConsole is a readily
available JMX client that is included with Sun's Java Developer Kit (version 5 onwards). The full name is
the 'Java Monitoring and Management Console', but we will refer to it as JConsole for the purposes of this
document.
You must add the location of the JConsole binary file to your 'path' environment variable. As JConsole
resides in the 'bin' (binaries) folder under your Java directory, the path should resemble something like
this:
JDK_HOME/bin/
In this example, replace 'JDK_HOME' with the full system path to your Java directory.
4. Configuring JConsole
To configure JConsole,
Note: Other JMX clients besides JConsole can read JMX information from Confluence.
The JMX interface allows you to see live internal information from your Confluence instance, via the
following MBeans:
IndexingStatistics
SystemInformation
This MBean shows information related to database latency. It also contains most of the information
presented on the System Information page.
RequestMetrics
This MBean shows information related to system load and error pages served.
MailServer-SMTPServer
This MBean shows information related to email dispatch attempts and failures. There will be an MBean for
every SMTP Mailserver that has been configured in the Confluence instance.
MailTaskQueue
SchedulingStatistics
This MBean shows information related to current jobs, scheduled tasks and the time that they were last
run.
RELATED TOPICS
You can also choose to email your site statistics information to Atlassian, with the 'Mail Statistics' button.
This may be useful for troubleshooting purposes, or when requesting Atlassian support. You can also
review the data before it is sent (if you are concerned that it may contain sensitive information).
1. Log into Confluence as a user with Confluence Administrator or System Administrator permissions.
2. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Site Statistics' under the heading 'Administration' in the
left-hand panel.
3. Click 'Load Statistics'. For a large Confluence installation, this may affect the server's performance.
For this reason, we suggest you do this at a 'quiet time' for the system.
4. Site Statistics will be displayed.
If the 'Site Statistics' option is not shown, you may have to install the Global Statistics Plugin. In this
case, follow the instructions for installing plugins and look for the 'Global Statistics Plugin'.
For more information, read the complete Documentation for the Global Statistics Plugin.
If you want to view page-view statistics, this is possible with the SQL Plugin. Some examples are
available on the Confluence Community Pages. Please note that some plugins are not officially
supported by Atlassian.
Overview
Any instance of Confluence which uses a clustered license has a Cluster Configuration page which
includes information about the active cluster.
Availability
Screenshot
This page shows your cluster configuration, and allows you to start a new Confluence cluster using data
from this instance.
Licensed nodes is the maximum number of instances of Confluence your license allows in a cluster.
Active nodes lists the instances of Confluence currently participating in the cluster.
All access to Confluence will be locked while this takes place, and you will be forced to restart
Confluence afterwards.
Cluster name is a short name for identifying your cluster. Other Confluence instances can join the cluster
using this name.
To join an existing cluster, start a clean copy of Confluence on this node and select 'Join Cluster'
during the setup wizard.
Related documents
On this page:
Symptoms
Below is a list of potential problems with a Confluence cluster, and their likely solutions. The solutions are
listed below.
Multicast
The multicast address and port used by Confluence can be found on the Cluster Administration page, or
in confluence.cfg.xml in the Confluence home directory.
Confluence uses a hashing algorithm to take the inputted name during setup and it is then turned into a
multicast address stored in the config file. Thus, once the initial setup is completed, Confluence will use
the address this is the reason why user can change the address if needed, without actually changing the
name. Consequently the additional nodes using the same multicast address specified in the config file are
able to join the cluster.
name="confluence.cluster.address">xxx.xx.xxx.xxx</property>
A warning message is displayed when an user changes the address from the one that Confluence has
generated by the hashing of the name. There is no way of eliminating the message any other way other
than by returning the address to the one that matches the cluster name. Purpose of the warning message
is to remind the user that the address has been changed - as it is not the hashed version any longer -
consequently the node can not join the cluster just by using the name. It is also necessary to provide the
correct address as well.
To ensure that the interface name is mapped correctly, the following tool can be used. It shows the
mapping of the interface name to the IP address.
networkInterface[1] = name:eth0 (VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet8) index: 2 addresses:
/192.168.133.1;
networkInterface[2] = name:eth1 (VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1) index: 3 addresses:
/192.168.68.1;
Debugging tools
Listed below are some debugging tools that help determine what the status of the multicast traffic is:
The MulticastTest is included in the Tangosol JAR bundled in Confluence's WEB-INF/lib/. You can run it by
using the following command-line, which assumes 'java' is on your PATH:
See the Coherence documentation for examples and full instructions on how to use this tool.
Multicast networking requirements vary across operating systems. Some operating systems require little
configuration, while some require the multicast address to be explicitly added to a network interface
before Confluence can use it.
If the MulticastTest tool shows that multicast traffic can't be sent or received correctly, adding a route
for multicast traffic on the correct interface will often fix the problem. The example below is for a Ubuntu
Linux system:
To support multiple applications using multicast on different interfaces, you may need to specify a route
specific to the Confluence multicast address.
Check firewall
Ensure your firewall allows UDP traffic on the multicast address and port used by Confluence.
Prefer IPv4
The fix is to add -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true to JAVA_OPTS. This tells the JVM to try binding an
IPv4 address first, and resort to IPv6 only if that fails.
Note: A more radical approach is to add NETWORKING_IPV6=no to /etc/sysconfig/network, yet probably
should be left for a later consideration on a production machine.
Confluence might have selected the incorrect interface for multicast traffic, which means it cannot
connect to other nodes in the cluster. To override the interface used for multicast traffic after initial setup,
edit confluence.cfg.xml in the Confluence home directory and add a property (or change the existing
one) to select your desired network interface. For example to tell Confluence to use eth1:
<property name="confluence.cluster.interface">eth1</property>
The multicast time-to-live (TTL) specifies how many hops a multicast packet should be allowed to travel
before it is discarded by a router. It should be set to the number of routers in between your clustered
nodes: 0 if both are on the same machine, 1 if on two different machines linked by a switch or cable, 2 if
on two different machines with one intermediate router, and so on.
Create a file in the Confluence home directory called tangosol-coherence-override.xml. Add the
following to it, setting the TTL value appropriately (1 is the default):
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<coherence>
<cluster-config>
<multicast-listener>
<time-to-live system-property='tangosol.coherence.ttl'>1</time-to-live>
</multicast-listener>
</cluster-config>
</coherence>
Alternatively, simply start Confluence with the system property: -Dtangosol.coherence.ttl=1. Again, 1
is the default value, and you should change it to something appropriate to your network topology.
Advanced switches and routers have the ability to understand multicast traffic, and route it appropriately.
Unfortunately sometimes this functionality doesn't work correctly with the multicast management
information (IGMP) published by the operating system running Confluence.
If multicast traffic is problematic, try disabling advanced multicast features on switches and routers in
between the clustered nodes. These features can prevent multicast traffic being transmitted by certain
operating systems.
For best results, use the simplest network topology possible for the cluster traffic between the nodes. For
two nodes, that means a single network cable. For larger numbers, try using a single high-quality switch.
If the solution to your problem involves changes to the Tangosol configuration, these changes should not
be made to the Confluence configuration in confluence/WEB-INF/classes/. Instead, to ensure your
configuration survives upgrades, make your changes via:
Examples of making these changes are shown in the increasing the TTL section.
• Optional Settings
° Attachment Storage Configuration
° Enabling CamelCase Linking
° Enabling Remote APIs
° Enabling Rich Text Editing Option
° Enabling Threaded Comments
° Enabling Trackback
° Making Rich Text Editing default
° WebDAV Configuration
• Other Settings
° Configuring Attachment Size
° Configuring Character Encoding
° Configuring HTTP Timeout Settings
° Configuring Indexing Language
° Configuring Jira Issues Icon mappings
° Configuring Number Formats
° Configuring Shortcut Links
° Configuring Time and Date Formats
° Number of Ancestors to Show in Breadcrumbs
° Thumbnail Settings
• Site Configuration
° Configuring the Server Base URL
° Configuring the Site Homepage
° Configuring the Site Support Address
° Customising Default Space Content
° Editing the Global Logo
° Editing the Site Title
° Editing the Site Welcome Message
° View Space Goes to Browse Space
A System Administrator can configure Confluence's attachment storage via the 'Attachment Storage'
option on the 'Administration Console'.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
By default, Confluence stores attachments in the attachments directory within the configured Confluence
home folder.
Database
Confluence gives administrators the option to store attachments in the database that Confluence is
configured to use.
Here are some reasons why, as an administrator, you may want to choose this storage system:
• Ease of backup.
• Avoiding issues with certain characters in attachment file names.
While storing attachments in the database can offer some advantages, please be aware
that the amount of space used by the database will increase because of the greater storage
requirements.
WebDAV
Confluence also allows administrators to set an external WebDAV repository as the location for
attachment storage.
The option to store Confluence attachments on a WebDAV server has never worked in a useful
fashion, and has not been maintained for many versions.
• The WebDAV attachment manager will be deprecated from Confluence 2.7, and will be
removed from a later version of Confluence.
• If you store attachments on external WebDAV servers, we recommend that you migrate to file-
system or database-backed attachment storage as soon as possible. Refer to CONF-9313 and
CONF-2887.
• This DOES NOT affect the operation of the WebDAV plugin.
When the migration occurs, all other users will be locked out of the Confluence instance. This is to
prevent modification of attachments while the migration occurs. Access will be restored as soon as
the migration is complete.
Migration warning
Troubleshooting
To enable debug logging for WebDAV attachment storage, add the following to the bottom of WEB-INF/
classes/log4j.properties and restart Confluence:
log4j.logger.com.atlassian.confluence.pages.persistence.dao=DEBUG,confluencelog
log4j.additivity.com.atlassian.confluence.pages.persistence.dao=false
log4j.logger.org.apache.webdav=DEBUG,confluencelog
log4j.additivity.org.apache.webdav=false
RELATED TOPICS
CamelCase linking is a form of markup used in many wikis where words are capitalised and compounded
together without spaces, 'LikeThis', in order to create links automatically.
To enable CamelCasing,
1. From the 'Administration Console' click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Edit' on the 'General Configuration' screen.
3. Select 'On' beside 'CamelCase Links'.
4. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
directory^adminhome.gif!
Confluence provides XML-RPC and SOAP remote APIs. You need to enable the APIs from the
Administration Console before you can access Confluence remotely.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Edit' next to 'Site Configuration'.
3. Select 'On' next to 'Remote API (XML-RPC & SOAP)'.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluencer.NET
With Confluence 2.0 and later versions, users have the option of using the Rich Text editor to create
pages. By default, this is set to 'On'. If desired, a Confluence administrator can disable 'Rich Text Editing'
from the Administration Console.
1. Go to the Administration Console and click General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. In the 'General Configuration' screen, click 'Edit'.
3. Select 'Off' beside 'Rich Text Editing'.
4. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
• Threaded: Shows the comments in a hierarchy of responses. Each subsequent reply to a comment is
indented to indicate the relationships between the comments.
• Flat: Displays all the comments in one single list and does not indicate the relationships between
comments.
RELATED TOPICS
Commenting on a Page
Viewing Comments
When Trackback is enabled, any time you link to an external webpage that supports Trackback
Autodiscovery, Confluence will send a trackback ping to that page to inform it that it has been linked to.
Confluence pages also support Trackback Autodiscovery and when Trackback is enabled, can receive
trackback pings sent by other sites.
To enable trackback,
RELATED TOPICS
A Confluence administrator can configure whether the default mode of editing on the site is 'Rich Text' or
'Wiki Markup'.
Users will still be able to configure their individual preferences from the 'Edit' tab of a page.
1. From the 'Administration Console' click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Edit' on the 'General Configuration' screen.
3. Select 'On' beside 'Users see Rich Text Editor by default'.
(Select 'Off' to set 'Wiki Markup' editing as the default.)
4. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
directory^adminhome.gif!
WebDAV allows users to access Confluence content via a WebDAV client, such as 'My Network Places'
in Microsoft Windows. Provided that the user has permission, they will be able to read and write to
spaces, pages and attachments in Confluence. They will be asked to log in, and the standard Confluence
permissions apply.
• allow/disallow specific actions on pages and attachments via WebDAV. The configurable actions are:
create/move, edit and delete.
• enable/disable access to specific virtual files/folders.
• The 'WebDav Configuration' page will only be available if the WebDAV plugin has been enabled
(see Installing and Configuring Plugins using the Plugin Repository Client).
• The settings on the 'WebDav Configuration' page do not apply to external attachment storage
configuration.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence gives you the option of limiting the maximum size of a single file attachment. Confluence
administrators should keep in mind that the amount of disk space used by Confluence is directly
proportional to the number and size of attachments put into the system.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Edit' on the 'General Configuration' screen.
3. Enter the maximum size next to 'Attachment Maximum Size'. The default is 10 mb.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
While it is possible to change the character encoding, unless you are certain of what you are doing, we
recommend that you leave this as it is.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Formatting and International Settings' screen. For Confluence
version earlier than 2.6.2, look for the 'Options and Settings' screen.
3. Beside 'Encoding', enter the new character encoding of your choice.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED LINKS
Joel Spolsky: The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About
Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)
RELATED TOPICS
When macros such as the RSS macro, the Calendar macro or the Repository Client Plugin make HTTP
requests to servers which are down, a long timeout value is used. You can set this timeout value through
a system parameter to avoid this.
If you are using Tomcat, you can add this to the catalina.bat/sh file:
JAVA_OPTS=-Dhttp.timeout=timeInSecondsHere
Changing the Indexing Language setting may improve the accuracy of Confluence search results if the
majority of the content of your site is in some language other than English. Since Confluence v. 2.2.5,
the content indexing support is provided in German, Russian, Chinese, CJK, French, Brazilian, Czech and
Greek besides English (default).
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' on the right hands side of the 'Formatting and International Settings' section.
3. There is a drop-down list of 'Indexing Language' currently supported in Confluence.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
If you are using the {jiraissues} macro to retrieve information from a JIRA server, you will have to tell
Confluence where to find the icons for any custom statuses or issue types you have configured in JIRA.
Confluence is configured by default with all JIRA's standard issue type and status icons. You will only
need to change these settings if you have customised additional statuses or issue types for JIRA or
have changed JIRA's default icons.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Jira Issue Icon Mappings' in the left panel.
2. For each icon you wish to configure, enter the name of the issue type or status into the Jira entity
field, and the filename of its icon into the filename field.
Ensure that the icon with that filename is located in the /images/icons directory of the JIRA
server.
3. You may edit existing icon mappings by clicking on the remove link by an existing mapping, then re-
adding it with a new icon filename.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen.
• There are two number format settings:
° Long Number Format
° Decimal Number Format
RELATED TOPICS
Shortcut links provide a quick way of linking to resources frequently referenced from Confluence. When
you create a shortcut link, you are assigning a key to a URL so that when a user edits Confluence
documents they can type the key instead of the complete URL.
Here is an example:
Most Google searches look like this: http://www.google.com/search?q=. If you create a shortcut for
this search with the key 'google', every time a user needs to use http://www.google.com/search?
q=searchterms, they can just type [searchterms@google] instead.
Shortcut links are added and maintained by Confluence administrators from the Administration Console.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Shortcut Links' in the left panel.
2. Enter a 'Key' for your shortcut. This is the shortcut name a user will use to reference the URL.
3. Enter the 'Expanded Value'. This is the URL for the link. You can use '%s' in the URL to specify
where the user's input is inserted. If there is no '%s' in the URL, the user's input will be put at the
end.
4. (Optional. Available in Confluence version 2.3 and later.) Enter a 'Default Alias'. This is the text of
the link which will be displayed on the page where the shortcut is used, with the user's text being
substituted for '%s'.
5. Click 'Save'.
Specify in the link what should go on the end of the shortcut URL, followed by an at-sign (@) and the key
of the shortcut. Shortcut names are case-insensitive. So, for example, using the keys shown in the above
screenshot:
Shortcut links can have titles just like any other link:
Once you have created a shortcut link, it is listed under 'Shortcut Links' in the 'Administration Console'.
Click 'Remove' to delete the shortcut.
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Confluence allows you to localise the formats used to display dates and times within the web interface.
The settings use the syntax of Java's SimpleDateFormat class (described below).
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen.
• There are three time and date format settings:
° Time Format : displaying only the time of day (for example, when each news item is
posted)
° Date Time Format : displaying both the date and the time of day (for example, in
RELATED LINKS
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Whenever there are three or more page links to be displayed in the breadcrumbs, Confluence will use an
ellipsis like this '...' and display only the topmost and lowermost page links. Clicking on the ellipsis will
display the page links in between.
Note that the Dashboard and space homepage links are always displayed at the start of the
breadcrumbs, and are not counted as ancestors for the purpose of this setting.
Screenshot: Breadcrumbs
You can configure how many immediate ancestors you want displayed in the breadcrumbs when you go
to the page.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen.
3. Beside 'Number of Ancestors to show in Breadcrumbs', enter a number. For example, if you enter 2,
two immediate ancestors for the page will be displayed following the dots.
4. 'Save' your changes.
The thumbnail settings allow you to define the height and width of images when they are displayed as
thumbnails. This affects the images displayed by the Gallery macro and the Thumbnail macro.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Edit' on the 'General Configuration' screen.
3. Under the heading 'Attachment Settings', enter a value in pixels for:
• Thumbnail maximum height — The default setting is 200 pixels.
• Thumbnail maximum width — The default setting is 200 pixels.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
Gallery Macro
Thumbnail Macro
Uploading a Profile Picture
The Server Base URL is the URL via which users access Confluence. The base URL must be set to the
same URL by which browsers will be viewing your Confluence site.
Confluence will autodetect the base URL during setup, but you may need to set it manually if your site's
URL changes, or if you set up Confluence from a different URL to the one that will be used to access it
publicly.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click the 'Edit' button next to 'Site Configuration'.
3. Enter the new URL in the 'Server Base URL' text box.
4. 'Save' your changes.
.
If you configure a different base URL, or if visitors use some other URL to access Confluence, it is
possible that you may encounter errors while viewing some pages.
Example
If Confluence is installed to run in a non-root context path, the server base URL should include the
context path. For example, if Confluence is running at http://www.foobar.com/confluence, the
server base URL will be http://www.foobar.com/confluence.
RELATED TOPICS
You can configure Confluence to direct users to any of the space home pages on the site when they log
in, rather than to the Dashboard.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Edit' next to the 'Site Configuration' panel.
3. Select a space from the 'Site Homepage' dropdown menu. When users log in, Confluence will open
the home page of the space you choose here.
4. Ensure that the 'View Space Goes to Browse Space' option is set to 'Off' if you want users to be sent
to the space home page and not the space summary page.
5. Click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the screen.
The spaces available to be set as your home page will depend on the access permissions of the space
and the site.
• If your site allows anonymous access, the site home page must also be anonymously accessible.
• The site home page must be accessible to the 'confluence-users' group.
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The Site Support Address is an email address which points to a JIRA instance configured to receive and
handle support requests by email.
By default, the site support address is set to the Atlassian Support System. In most cases, there is no
need to change it.
In order to use the site support address, ensure that SMTP email is set up on your Confluence instance.
1. Go to the Administration Console and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click the 'Edit' button next to 'Site Configuration'.
3. Enter the new 'Site Support Address'.
4. Click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the screen.
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Confluence Administrators can define default content for a space home page. This content will appear on
the home page whenever someone adds a new space. You can define different content for global spaces
and for personal spaces.
Notes:
• The default content will appear only for new spaces created after you have defined the content.
Content in existing home pages will not be changed.
• Confluence will replace the text '{0}' with the space name.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Default Space Content' under 'Configuration' in the left
panel.
2. The 'Space Home Pages' tab will open on the 'Default Space Content' page. Enter the content which
you want to appear on the home page for new global spaces.
3. Click the 'Save' button.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Default Space Content' under 'Configuration' in the left
panel.
2. The 'Space Home Pages' tab will open on the 'Default Space Content' page. Click the 'Personal Space
Home Pages' tab.
3. Enter the content which you want to appear on the home page for new personal spaces.
4. Click the 'Save' button.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Default Space Content' under 'Configuration' in the left
panel.
2. Select either the 'Space Home Pages' tab or the 'Personal Space Home Pages' tab, as required.
3. Click the 'Revert' button.
By default, the global logo appears beside the page title on all pages in the site. You can disable the logo
or replace it with one of your own.
1. From the 'Administration Console' click on 'Global logo' under the heading 'Look and Feel' in the left
panel.
2. In the screen displayed, select 'Off' to disable logo.
3. To upload a new logo, click 'Browse' to select a new image and click 'Upload Logo'.
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The site title appears in your browser's title bar. By default, it is set to 'Confluence'.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen.
3. Enter a new title for your site in the input field beside 'Site Title' and 'Save'.
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The site welcome message appears on the Dashboard. It can be used to provide users with an
introduction to the site, or as a "message of the day".
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen..
3. In the text-entry box beside 'Site Welcome Message' enter your text using regular Confluence
markup.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
By default, when you click on a space link, you are taken to the space's homepage. If you wish, you
can configure Confluence to redirect all space links on the site to the 'Browse Space' view of the space
instead.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence allows the configuration of which character encoding is used to deliver pages.
While different character encodings are supported, we strongly recommend that UTF-8 is used.
Confluence is heavily tested on UTF-8, and users are likely to have less problems with this encoding
than others.
Mac Users
Mac Users please note that MacRoman encoding is compatible with UTF-8. You do not need to
change your encoding settings if you are already using MacRoman.
To avoid problems with character encoding, make sure the encoding used across the different
components of your system are the same:
If you are having problems with the character encoding in Confluence, please see the Troubleshooting
Character Encodings page.
Often users may have problems with certain characters in a Confluence instance. Symptoms may include:
•
Non-ASCII characters appearing as question marks
• Page links with non-ASCII characters not working
• Single characters being displayed as two characters
• Garbled text appearing
In most cases, it is due to a mis-configuration in one of the components that Confluence uses.
Confluence includes an encoding test that can reveal problems with your configuration.
To perform the test, access the Encoding Test page via the <confluence instance>/admin/
encodingtest.action page on your Confluence instance. You will be required to copy and paste a line of
text and submit a form. The test will take the text and pass it through Confluence, the application server
and the database, and return the results.
Example:
http://confluence.atlassian.com/admin/encodingtest.action or
http://<host address>/confluence/admin/encodingtest.action
If the text displayed in the encoding test is different to what was entered, then there are problems
with your character encoding settings.
MySQL 3.x is known to have some problems with the upper- and lower-casing of some characters,
and may fail the last two tests. For more information, see MySQL 3.x Character Encoding Problems.
As mentioned in the Configuring Encoding document, the same character encoding should be used across
the database, application server and web application (Confluence).
• To change the character encoding used in Confluence, see Configuring Character Encoding.
• To change the character encoding used in the application server, please ensure you set the
Application Server URL encoding and view your application server's documentation on any other
settings required to enable your encoding.
• To change the character encoding used in the database, see Configuring Database Character
Encoding.
3. Requesting support
If there are still problems with character encoding after following the above steps, create a support
request, and our support staff will aid in solving your problem.
The € (euro) symbol is a three byte character, with byte values in file (UTF-8) of 0xE2, 0x82, 0xAC.
Sometimes, if the character encoding is not set consistently among all participating entities of the
system, Confluence, server and the database, one may experience strange behaviour.
...
I write a page with a Euro sign in it (€). All is well, the Euro sign shows up in the wiki markup
text-box, and the preview, and the display of the saved page.
One day later, the Euro sign has changed into a question mark upside down!
...
What is going on? Why does the Euro sign mysteriously change? How do I prevent it?
Interestingly enough the character encoding test passes with no problems, demonstrating that
Confluence and the connected Database both recognise the € symbol.
When data transferred to it via the connection which does not use utf-8 encoding gets encoded
incorrectly. Hence, updating the connection encoding may resolve this problem from now on, yet it
probably would not affect already existing data.
If your Database encoding is not set to UTF-8, yet is using some other encoding such as latin1, it could
be one of the potential reasons why you lose the "€" characters at some stage. It could be occurring
due to caching. When Confluence saves data to the database, it may also keep a local cached copy.
If the database encoding is set incorrectly, the Euro character may not be correctly recorded in the
database, but Confluence will continue to use its cached copy of that data (which is encoded correctly).
The encoding error will only be noticed when the cache expires, and the incorrectly encoded data is
fetched from the database.
For instance the latin1 encoding would store and display all 2-byte UTF8 characters correctly except for
the euro character which is replaced by '?' before being stored. As Confluence's encoding was set to
UTF-8, the 2-byte UTF-8 characters were stored in latin1 database assuming that they were two latin1
different characters, instead of one utf8 character. Nevertheless, this is not the case for 3-byte utf8
characters, such as the Euro symbol.
Please ensure that you set the character encoding to UTF-8 for all the entities of your system as advised
in this guide.
MySQL 3.x is known to have some problems upper- and lower-casing certain (non-ASCII) characters.
Solution
Configuring your Confluence server to send outgoing mail allows your Confluence users to:
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Mail Servers' under 'Configuration' in the left panel. This
will list all currently configured SMTP servers.
2. Click 'Add New SMTP Server' (or edit an existing server).
• Name: By default, this is set to 'SMTP Server'.
• From: Enter the email address that will be displayed in the 'from' field for email messages
originating from this server.
• Subject Prefix: Enter a subject prefix, if required.
3. Configuring the Host Address, Username and Password:
• Manually enter your 'Host Address', 'Username' and 'Password' details in the form fields
displayed (recommended).
OR
• Specify the 'JNDI' location of a mail session configured in your application server in the form
field displayed.
Troubleshooting
If you experience problems with these configurations, please check that your <Confluence-Install>/
confluence/WEB-INF/lib contains only one copy of the following JAR files:
1. javamail-x.x.x.jar
2. activation-x.x.x.jar
3. mail-x.x.x.jar
• javamail-1.3.2.jar
• activation-1.0.2.jar
• mail-1.3.2.jar (or later)
You will then need to move these into the proper directory:
Standalone Version: Please move the above three jar files from the confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory
to the common/lib directory and restart Confluence.
RELATED TOPICS
The 'Mail Page' plugin allows anyone with the 'View' space permission to email a Confluence page.
Confluence versions 2.4 and later come with the 'Mail Page' plugin preinstalled.
The 'Mail Page' plugin is disabled by default. This is because, when someone emails a Confluence page,
they can select from a list of all Confluence users and groups (note, however, that email addresses
are not visible), or even mail the page to arbitrary addresses. If you have enabled anonymous access
or self-signup, visitors could potentially use this feature to send spam or nuisance email through your
Confluence server.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Plugins' under 'Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. This will list all plugins that are currently installed in your Confluence system. Click 'Mail Page
Plugin'.
3. This will display the 'Mail Page Plugin' details. To enable the 'Mail Page' plugin, click 'Enable plugin'.
4. Ensure that both of the following are enabled:
• 'Mail Page Link' — displays the 'E-mail' link next to the 'Copy' link on the 'Page Info' screen
(see 'E-mailing a page')
• 'mailpageactions' — enables the e-mail operation.
RELATED TOPICS
Email messages waiting to be sent out are queued in a mail queue and periodically flushed from
Confluence once a minute. A Confluence administrator can also manually flush emails from the mail
queue.
If there is an error sending messages, the failed emails are sent to an error queue from which you can
either try to resend them or delete them.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Mail Queue' in the left-hand panel. This will display the
emails currently in the queue.
2. Click 'Flush Mail Queue' to send all emails immediately.
3. Click 'Error Queue' to view failed email messages. You can try to 'Resend' the messages, which will
flush the mails back to the 'Mail Queue' or 'Delete' them from here.
RELATED TOPICS
RELATED TOPICS
RELATED TOPICS
This document will assist you in adding Confluence to your existing JIRA Standalone.
This guide is for experts only. If you run into any difficulties with this process, Atlassian technical
support may provide limited assistance outside of helping users switch to running Confluence Standalone
separately.
Before embarking on this process, consider whether you could not rather run JIRA and Confluence in
separate Tomcat instances running behind an Apache frontend server (see guides for Confluence and
JIRA). There are some benefits to keeping them separate:
1. Create a file called confluence.xml in your JIRA standalone's conf/Catalina/localhost directory (if
you have set up a different hostname for your JIRA tomcat instance, please specify that instead of
localhost)
2. Open confluence.xml and add these lines:
3.
For docBase specify the value you noted down earlier. This is the full path to the confluence
folder in your confluence-<version> installation folder, not the confluence home folder. It should
look like: c:/<path to confluence installation>/confluence-<version>/confluence.
4.
For docBase specify the value you noted down earlier. This is the full path to the confluence
folder in your confluence-<version> installation folder, not the confluence home folder. It should
look like: c:/<path to confluence installation>/confluence-<version>/confluence.
5. Remove the commons-logging-1.0.4.jar file from the confluence\WEB-INF\lib directory
Do not delete the existing Jira <Context> block. Insert the code above after the Jira <Context> block.
Step 4 - Modify your setenv.sh/bat (ONLY IF YOU ARE RUNNING A SUN MICROSYSTEMS
JVM)
The Java Virtual Machine sets aside a portion of memory as the "permanent space", for objects that it
never expects to have to garbage-collect. Because JIRA and Confluence are both quite large applications,
it is possible that this permanent space will be filled up. Increasing the application heap size will not help,
because the permanent generation size is a separate setting.
This flag is only supported on JVM's created by Sun Microsystems. If you include this flag while
running another vendors JVM (such as JRocket, or IBM's JVM) they will not start.
When setting up the Confluence database do not reuse the JIRA database. Create a new database for
Confluence.
Troubleshooting
When I try to send a test mail from Confluence, I get javax.mail.NoSuchProviderException: smtp
In some circumstances, Confluence will be unable to send email after being deployed in the same
application-server as JIRA. If, when you try to send a test mail from the administration tool, you get the
error: "javax.mail.NoSuchProviderException: smtp", please follow these instructions to fix it.
I have installed JIRA and Confluence in some other application server than Tomcat
These instructions only apply to the standalone Tomcat version of JIRA. Other application servers have
not been tested in this configuration, and users have specifically reported difficulties deploying the two
applications together in Orion Server and JBoss. We hope to resolve these issues soon.
If you are seeing a large amount of DEBUG logging output, then ensure that you have removed the
commons-logging-1.0.4.jar file from the confluence\WEB-INF\lib directory
Take a look at the technical guide to the process of adding your Confluence EAR-WAR to JIRA
Standalone
JIRA and Confluence were designed to complement each other. We've all seen projects where people try
to store all their knowledge in the issue tracker, and we've seen projects where people have suffered
trying to track issues in a knowledge management tool. We say: collect your team's thoughts, plans and
knowledge in Confluence, track your issues in JIRA, and let the two applications work together to help
you get your job done.
Here are four ways you can get JIRA and Confluence working together: use Confluence shortcuts to make
easy links to JIRA issues, use trackback for two-way linking between Confluence and JIRA, use macros to
include JIRA reports in Confluence pages, and integrate your JIRA and Confluence user management.
JIRA: http://jira.atlassian.com/secure/QuickSearch.jspa?searchString=
This way, it's simple to create links using Confluence's shortcut notation. Link directly to JIRA issues:
CONF-1000, or use JIRA's intuitive quick-search functionality to create links to particular groups of
issue: CONF open improvements will link to a list of all open issues in the Confluence project of type
"Improvement" (try it and see!)
• Document your user stories or use-cases in Confluence, and see at a glance which issues affect each
use-case.
• If a JIRA issue requires more discussion or thought than can be conveniently held in comments, link
them to a Confluence page.
(Note: as of Confluence 1.0 and JIRA 2.6, there is no mechanism for trackback to log in to JIRA or
Confluence, so the use of trackback is limited to pages that are visible to anonymous visitors. In a
protected Intranet environment, you may wish to open up Anonymous access to JIRA and Confluence to
This way you can incorporate information from JIRA into the normal flow of your knowledge
management. Combined with other macros like {junitreport}, {rss} and {html-include} and the FatCow
suite, you can create dashboards in Confluence consolidating information from across your project, with
Confluence and JIRA at the centre.
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, an administrator can configure JIRA (3.12.0 or later) and Confluence to
communicate in a trusted way, so that Confluence can request information from JIRA on behalf of the
currently logged-in user. JIRA will not ask the user to log in again or to supply a password.
Trusted communication is used when embedding information from one application (e.g. a list of JIRA
issues) into another application (e.g. a Confluence page).
Alternatively you can configure Confluence to use JIRA's user database (this requires that you are using
JIRA with an external database; it will not work if you are using JIRA with an embedded HSQL database).
If, for some reason, you need to override the name of a column or a table used in Confluence's bridge to
JIRA, you may do so in osuser.xml (see below).
This is most likely something you would consider doing if columns names were failing because your
database is case sensitive.
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcAccessProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcProfileProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
When JIRA is configured to trust Confluence in this way, we call Confluence the 'trusted application' and
JIRA the 'trusting application'.
Trusted communication is used when embedding information from one application (e.g. a list of JIRA
issues) into another application (e.g. a Confluence page). Currently only JIRA can be configured to trust
Confluence, and only the following two macros have been enhanced to use trusted communication:
Further implementations will follow, especially as we roll out the tight integration required between
Atlassian products for JIRA Studio.
Do not configure a trusted application unless you trust all code in that application to behave itself at
all times. Trusted communication uses public/private key cryptography to establish the identity of
the trusted server, so you must also be sure that the trusted application will maintain the security of
its private key. Read the details of the security risks below.
On this page:
Prerequisites
• JIRA 3.12.0 or later.
• Confluence 2.7.0 or later.
• In order to authenticate successfully against JIRA, the Confluence user must also be registered as a
JIRA user with the same username.
It is highly recommended that your JIRA and Confluence instances share a common user base,
rather than two separate user bases with duplicated usernames. You will receive an error if
Confluence passes JIRA a username which JIRA cannot recognise. Also, with separate user bases
you run the risk that the same username may be used by two different people. The trusted
application does not supply the user's password, so the trusting application will assume the
username belongs to the user registered in the trusting application's own user base.
• Your JIRA instance might not be public, and you might not want to allow anonymous access to your
issues.
• You might have security restrictions on some of your issues. So you don't want to allow someone to
leak data from your JIRA project by using the JIRA Issues Macro on a Confluence page.
Using the JIRA Administration Console, the JIRA System Administrator defines Confluence as a trusted
application by specifying the Confluence instance's URL and other information. Refer to the JIRA
documentation for details.
A Confluence System Administrator can decide on the level of trusted communication used by the
macros. The different levels are:
• Ignore trusted communications altogether. Trusted communication is turned off at the global level.
• Perform trusted communications whenever the macro is used on a Confluence page, but do not
show certain warning messages.
• Perform trusted communications whenever the macro is used on a Confluence page, and show all
warning messages. This is the default configuration.
To change the default trusted communication level for the JIRA Macros plugin,
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' in Confluence and click 'Plugins' in the left-hand panel.
2. The 'Plugin Manager' screen appears, showing a list of installed plugins. Scroll down and click the
'JIRA Macros' link.
3. The 'JIRA Macros' panel appears in the top middle of the screen, as shown below. Click 'Enable' or
'Disable' next to the following options:
• 'JIRA application trust support' – With this option enabled, Confluence will attempt trusted
communication with JIRA whenever a user views a page containing the JIRA Issues or Portlet
macro, provided criteria are met as described below. With this option disabled, Confluence will
never attempt trusted communication with JIRA for these macros.
Disable the above option if you do not intend to configure trusted communication between
JIRA and Confluence.
• 'JIRA application trust warnings' – With this option enabled, Confluence will display all
error and warning messages that may arise from a problem during trusted communication
(assuming that trusted communication is enabled). With this option disabled, Confluence will
suppress certain warnings. See troubleshooting below.
Disable the above option if you have a large number of existing JIRA macros already on
your Confluence instance, pointing at a diverse range of JIRA servers. Some of those JIRA
servers may have a trusted communication link established (requiring the functionality to be
enabled) while other JIRA servers may have no trusted communication link. In this case, you
Remove the username and password from your macro markup code
Prior to Confluence 2.7, you needed to include a username and password in the macro markup code
if you wanted to display JIRA issues which had restricted viewing. Once your administrator has set
up trusted communication between Confluence and JIRA, you no longer need to include a username
and password in the markup code for your JIRA macros.
The following options are available for determining the issues which will be retrieved from JIRA and
displayed on the Confluence page:
• If trusted
communication
is enabled, the
authorisation will
Refer to the section below for details of what happens when a user views a Confluence page containing a
JIRA macro.
• If the macro markup contains an explicit username and password in the URL parameter, Confluence
will not request trusted communication with JIRA. Confluence will retrieve the JIRA issues which the
specified username is authorised to see. This behaviour is the same as Confluence versions prior to
2.7.
• If the macro markup contains the anonymous parameter, Confluence will retrieve only the
JIRA issues which allow unrestricted viewing. Confluence will not attempt to set up a trusted
communication link with JIRA in this case.
• If the user is anonymous (not logged in), Confluence will retrieve only the JIRA issues which allow
unrestricted viewing. Confluence will not attempt to set up a trusted communication link with JIRA in
this case.
• If trusted communication is disabled via the Plugin Manager in Confluence, then Confluence will not
request trusted communication with JIRA. So if there is no explicit username and password in the
markup code, Confluence will retrieve only the JIRA issues which allow unrestricted viewing. This
behaviour is the same as Confluence versions prior to 2.7.
• If trusted communication is enabled via the Plugin Manager in Confluence:
° If the user is logged in, then Confluence attempts trusted communication with JIRA.
Confluence sends the username to JIRA. JIRA returns a set of issues which that username
Security Risks
Please take the following considerations into account when setting up trusted communication:
• When you configure JIRA to trust an application, you are allowing the application to access JIRA
in the name of a particular user. The trusted application passes JIRA the user's login name, but no
other authentication information. JIRA does not request the user's password. By doing this, you are
bypassing JIRA's authentication mechanism.
• Do not configure a trusted application unless you trust all code in that application to behave itself at
all times.
• Trusted communication uses public/private key cryptography to establish the identity of the trusted
server. The trusted application needs to maintain the security of its private key. Confluence stores its
private key in the database. So you must be sure that the Confluence database is secure, and also
any full backups of the database.
• Be aware of the risks associated with using separate user bases, as explained above. We strongly
recommend a common user base between the trusted and trusting applications.
• When configuring an application to trust another application, you should use a trusted network or
SSL to protect the sensitive information passed between the applications during the configuration
procedure. This will help to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
Troubleshooting
Below are the warning messages which may appear on your Confluence page, above the output of the
JIRA Issues or JIRA Portlet macro.
Read this section if you want a bit more information on the technical side of things.
Atlassian has developed its own protocol to set up trust between JIRA and Confluence. Below is a
technical overview of the process.
1. When the JIRA System Administrator provides the base URL of the Confluence instance, JIRA
requests a trusted application authentication certificate from Confluence. The certificate contains
Confluence's trusted application ID and public key (generated specifically for use with the TAA
protocol).
2. JIRA validates the certificate and asks the System Administrator for a few extra details about the
trust relationship, such as a name for the Confluence instance, timeout, allowed IP addresses and
allowed request URLs.
3. JIRA stores all this information in the database.
1. Confluence sends a web request to JIRA, appending additional headers to the request, including:
• Timestamp (nonce) of the request + user name of the currently logged-in Confluence user,
encrypted with a symmetric key (generated on the fly).
• The symmetric key, encrypted with Confluence's private key.
• Confluence's application ID (as displayed when trusted communication was established).
2. JIRA attempts to decode the encrypted headers, using the stored information about the relationship.
It conducts the following checks to validate the request:
• The trusted application ID refers to a valid trusted application.
• The given username exists in the JIRA user base.
• The agreed timeout has not expired.
• The request originated from a trusted IP address.
• The resource being requested matches those specified in the URL match list.
3. If any of these checks fails, a response is sent to Confluence indicating the reason for failure.
Otherwise, JIRA will authenticate the specified user for the duration of the single request, and
respond with the resources (i.e. the JIRA issues).
RELATED TOPICS
It is possible to run Confluence in a clustered environment instead of on a single server. This means that
you can run multiple copies of Confluence in a cluster, so that clients (such as a browser) can connect to
any copy and see the same information.
While we have tried to make clustering Confluence as easy and administrator-friendly as possible,
it is a major architectural change and requires extra planning for deployment and upgrades. Please
consider the information on the Cluster Checklist and then consult Atlassian support before making
your final decision.
This page gives an overview and links to further pages with information on installing, configuring and
administering a Confluence cluster.
Technical Overview
Read a technical overview of clustering in Confluence.
• Fresh installation
• Existing data
If you are upgrading an existing Confluence cluster to a new version of Confluence, refer to the cluster
upgrade guide.
Troubleshooting
• Cluster troubleshooting
RELATED TOPICS
The recommended way of changing database connections is to shut down the whole cluster, install
Confluence into new and empty directories and use the Setup Wizard to configure all new database
connection settings.
However, if you wish to manually change your settings, you may proceed as described below.
It is strongly recommended that you test all of the following in a staging or test instance of Confluence
before performing these steps in your production environment.
Step 1: Prepare
You need to shut down all the nodes in the cluster, not just one.
It is crucial that you bring up the node on which you applied the changes first. Otherwise you will get an
error message, and have to shut down all instances again.
Done.
RELATED PAGES
It is possible to run Confluence in a clustered environment instead of on a single server. This means that
you can run multiple copies of Confluence in a cluster, so that clients (such as a browser) can connect to
any copy and see the same information.
Refer to the clustering overview for more information and a list of related pages about clustering
Confluence.
While we have tried to make clustering Confluence as easy and administrator-friendly as possible,
it is a major architectural change and requires extra planning for deployment and upgrades. Please
consider the information below and then consult Atlassian Sales before making your final decision.
Summary of the information on this page:
Error formatting macro: toc: java.lang.NullPointerException
As a service to our customers, we offer to review your deployment plan and make recommendations
to help you avoid common pitfalls. To make use of this service, please consider all the information
below carefully while planning your clustered deployment. Then contact Atlassian Pre-Sales for
recommendations.
If you need to raise a support request with Atlassian during or after cluster deployment, we will need
to ask you questions about your configuration. It will save crucial time if you can provide us with your
deployment plan.
For more information about clustering Confluence, refer to the clustering overview.
Assumed Knowledge
In writing this document, we have assumed that our readers have an in-depth knowledge of the following
technical areas:
• Database
• Networking
• Application servers
• Load balancers
Before starting a clustered deployment please read the information on this page carefully, as well as the
linked documentation, to assess if you have the assumed knowledge.
General Considerations
The points in this section of the page will help you evaluate your reasons for considering a
clustered deployment, and then decide whether Confluence Clustered is the right solution for your
environment.
Confluence Clustered will not improve performance in systems with few Clustering Confluence means that user requests
users.
can be served by independent machines. However,
if rendering a complicated page (e.g. containing
many macros or rendering many graphs) takes
five seconds on an otherwise idle server, it will
not be faster in a clustered environment. This
is because neither of the independent servers
will be able to serve this complicated page faster
than the original single server. Also, there is a
certain management overhead in distributed
environments, so clustering an installation with
few users may even leave you with a slower
environment than before.
Confluence Clustered is not a high availability solution. Confluence Clustered is not designed specifically
to provide a high availability solution.
Confluence Clustered is not for disaster recovery nor for transparent If one node crashes, there is no transparent
failover.
failover for the connected client. Also, our network
requirements (see below) make Confluence
unsuitable for deployment to different cities or
even to different buildings.
Server Setup
All cluster nodes must have the same version of OS, application server, etc. Confluence requires a homogeneous environment.
All Confluence cluster nodes must have the same
version of the following:
• Operating system
• CPU
• Installed memory
• Java
• Application server
Use good and up-to-date hardware with plenty of RAM. While the details are up to you, we strongly
suggest that your servers have at least 4GB of
Document generated by Confluence on Apr 10, 2008 21:34 Page 139
Network Setup
We strongly recommend hardware, not software, load balancers. If you use a software load balancer, it must be
deployed on a machine of its own.
Use separate network adapters for communication between servers. The Confluence cluster nodes should have a
separate physical network (i.e. separate NICs) for
inter-server communication.
The switch connecting the Confluence cluster nodes must not be a 'smart
switch'. Not supported. Smart switches are not covered
by Atlassian Support for Confluence Clustered.
Cisco switches need additional configuration. If the switch connecting the Confluence cluster
nodes is a Cisco switch then it might need
additional configuration to support Confluence
clustering.
Please make sure you find out all the details about
your switches before you start the deployment.
It is recommended that the database is on a different physical network Since you want to increase your capacity and
from the Confluence server nodes.
performance for high loads, it is recommended to
have your database on a different network. Please
refer to the recommended topology diagram for
more information.
Minimize the latency between the Confluence cluster nodes and the Even though having the nodes and the database
database.
on the same physical network usually suffices, you
should take the time to explicitly measure network
latency, and make sure it is as close to zero as
possible.
You need network support staff available to troubleshoot cluster Setting up a cluster is not trivial. Even small
communication issues.
Document generated by Confluence on Apr 10, 2008 21:34 problems in network design will be expanded in a140
Page
clustered installation. (This is true of any kind of
software.)
This document is for system administrators looking to evaluate the security of the Confluence web
application. It does not address Confluence's internal security model – user/group management and
content permissions – except as it relates to the overall application security.
Password Storage
When Confluence's internal user management is used, passwords are hashed through SHA1 before
being stored in the database. There is no mechanism within Confluence to retrieve a user's password –
when password recovery is performed, a new random password is generated and mailed to the user's
registered address.
When external user management is enabled, password storage is delegated to the external system.
Buffer Overflows
Confluence is a 100% pure Java application with no native components. As such it is highly resistant to
buffer overflow vulnerabilities – possible buffer overruns are limited to those that are bugs in the Java
Runtime Environment itself.
SQL Injection
Confluence interacts with the database through the Hibernate Object-Relational mapper. Database
queries are generated using standard APIs for parameter replacement rather than string concatenation.
As such, Confluence is highly resistant to SQL injection attacks.
Script Injection
Confluence is a self-contained Java application and does not launch external processes. As such, it is
highly resistant to script injection attacks.
Cross-site Scripting
• The wiki markup language in Confluence does not support dangerous HTML markup
• Macros allowing the insertion of raw HTML are disabled by default
• HTML uploaded as a file attachment is served with a content-type requesting the file be downloaded,
rather than being displayed inline
• Only system administrators can make HTML-level customisations of the application
When cross-site scripting vulnerabilities are found in the Confluence web application, we endeavour to fix
them as quickly as possible.
Confluence does not directly support SSL/TLS. Administrators who are concerned about transport-layer
security should set up SSL/TLS at the level of the Java web application server, or the HTTP proxy in front
of the Confluence application.
For more information on configuring Confluence for SSL, see: Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page
Security
Confluence delegates session management to the Java application server in which it is deployed. We are
not aware of any viable session-hijacking attacks against the Tomcat application server shipped with
Confluence Standalone. If you are deploying Confluence in some other application server, you should
ensure that it is not vulnerable to session hijacking.
Plugin Security
Administrators install third party plugins at their own risk. Plugins run in the same virtual machine as the
Confluence server, and have access to the Java runtime environment, and the Confluence server API.
Administrators should always be aware of the source of the plugins they are installing, and whether they
trust those plugins.
Confluence is written under the assumption that anyone given System Administrator privileges is trusted.
System administrators are able, either directly or by installing plugins, to perform any operation that the
Confluence application is capable of.
As with any application, you should not run Confluence as the root/Administrator user. If you want
Confluence to listen on a privileged network port, you should set up port forwarding or proxying rather
than run Confluence with additional privileges. The extra-careful may consider running Confluence inside
a chroot jail.
All communication about the vulnerability should be performed through JIRA, so we can keep track of the
issue and get a patch out as soon as possible.
When a security issue in Confluence is discovered and resolved, we will inform customers through the
following mechanisms:
This security advisory is not endorsed by Atlassian - this is a public service advisory from a member
of the confluence community. Please remember to backup any modified files, and use these
instructions at your own risk. While this information is based on Confluence v2.1.2, it may have uses
with older affected versions of Confluence.
Problem
There is a possibility of XSS exploitation of the Full Name user profile field when displayed.
Solution
The problem was unescaped outputting of the fullname - wrapping the output in
$generalUtil.htmlEncode() resolve it. The vast majority of the problem can be resolved by changing /
confluence/template/includes/macros.vm in the distribution on the following lines:
• 180
• 186
• 200
• 340
• 893
I have attached the modified macros.vm file here which you can copy into your distribution.
Scope
There are other places which are still affected which Atlassian have been made aware of, a complete
resolution should be provided by Atlassian in their own offical advisory.
A flaw has been found in Confluence by which attackers can bypass Confluence security and change
content on the site. Atlassian STRONGLY recommends that all Confluence customers apply the fix
described below immediately, or upgrade to Confluence 1.3.3
Vulnerability
By crafting custom URLs, any person with the ability to browse Confluence can modify content on the
site, bypassing security settings. This vulnerability does not allow users to view content they would not
normally be able to view, or escalate their privileges in other ways.
This flaw affects all versions of Confluence prior to 1.3.3, including the 1.4-DR development releases.
Fix
This vulnerability is fixed in Confluence 1.3.3 and later. Customers who do not wish to migrate to 1.3.3
can fix this bug using the procedure below:
<interceptor-stack name="defaultStack">
<interceptor-ref name="profiling">
<param name="location">Before defaultStack</param>
</interceptor-ref>
<interceptor-ref name="transaction"/>
<interceptor-ref name="authentication"/>
<interceptor-ref name="requestParameterHack"/>
<interceptor-ref name="eventnotifier"/>
<interceptor-ref name="autowire"/>
<interceptor-ref name="params"/>
<interceptor-ref name="servlet"/>
<interceptor-ref name="pageAware"/>
<interceptor-ref name="permissions"/>
<interceptor-ref name="profiling">
<param name="location">After defaultStack</param>
</interceptor-ref>
</interceptor-stack>
<interceptor-ref name="eventnotifier"/>
--> <interceptor-ref name="autowire"/> <--
--> <interceptor-ref name="params"/> <--
<interceptor-ref name="servlet"/>
4. Swap the two lines around. The whole stack should now look like this:
<interceptor-stack name="defaultStack">
<interceptor-ref name="profiling">
<param name="location">Before defaultStack</param>
</interceptor-ref>
<interceptor-ref name="transaction"/>
<interceptor-ref name="authentication"/>
<interceptor-ref name="requestParameterHack"/>
<interceptor-ref name="eventnotifier"/>
<interceptor-ref name="params"/>
<interceptor-ref name="autowire"/>
<interceptor-ref name="servlet"/>
<interceptor-ref name="pageAware"/>
5. Restart Confluence.
A flaw has been found in Confluence by which attackers to inject malicious HTML code into Confluence.
Atlassian STRONGLY recommends that all Confluence customers apply the fix described below
immediately, or upgrade to Confluence 2.0.2
Vulnerability
By entering HTML code into the Confluence search input fields, attackers can cause arbitrary scripting
code to be executed by the user's browser in the security context of the Confluence instance.
This flaw affects all versions of Confluence between 1.4-DR releases and 2.0.1.
(Atlassian was not informed of the problem before it was published by third-party security researchers.
You can read the third-party security advisory here: http://secunia.com/advisories/17833/. The
vulnerability was originally reported here.)
Fix
This vulnerability is fixed in Confluence 2.0.2 and later. Customers who do not wish to migrate to 2.0.2
can fix this bug using the procedure below:
with
with
5. Restart Confluence.
Alternatively, you can download the patched source files from CONF-4825. If you are patching a 2.0.x
installation, then use the files with the .2.0 suffix. If you are patching a 1.4.x installation, then use the
files with the .1.4 suffix.
A flaw has been found in Confluence by which attackers to inject malicious HTML code into Confluence.
Atlassian STRONGLY recommends that all Confluence customers apply the fix described below
immediately, or upgrade to Confluence 2.1.3.
Vulnerability
By entering HTML/JavaScript code into the full name of a user's profile, attackers can cause arbitrary
scripting code to be executed by the user's browser in the security context of the Confluence instance.
This flaw affects all versions of Confluence between 1.4-DR releases and 2.1.2.
This issue was initally reported by Ricardo Sueiras and a fix was quickly documented by Dan Hardiker at
the Confluence Community Security Advisory 2006-01-19 page. Our thanks to them for bringing this to
our attention.
Fix
This vulnerability is fixed in Confluence 2.1.3 and later. Customers who do not wish to migrate to 2.1.3
can fix this bug using the procedure below:
Steps to fix:
Note: If you are using version 1.4.4, please download and copy this file instead. You will need to rename
it back to macros.vm.
If you are not using any of the above versions, you will need to replace wrap calls to display full names of
users in $generalUtil.htmlEncode(). Alternatively, send us an email. We do however encourage you to use
the latest stable point release regardless of the version you are using.
A flaw has been found in Confluence by which the unrestricted content of a space can be revealed in
search results.
Vulnerability
By entering in a space key and blank query string into the Search macro, pages from the specified space
will be displayed, without filtering on page and space permissions. This can allow unpermitted users to
view the excerpts of pages they don't have access to.
Fix
This vulnerability is fixed in Confluence 2.1.3 and later. We strongly suggest that customers upgrade to
this release to fix the vulnerability.
Customers who are using 1.4.x and do not wish to upgrade can download a patched class from
CONF-5198.
Vulnerability
By crafting a custom HTTP request, an attacker can delete or modify global permissions settings on a
Confluence site.
This flaw affects all Confluence versions between 1.4 and 2.2.2. 2.2.3 and later are not vulnerable.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.2.3. Patches are also available for all versions of Confluence
betwen 1.4 and 2.2.2. For more information, please see this issue report.
Atlassian STRONGLY recommends that all customers either upgrade to Confluence 2.2.3, or apply the
patch.
In this advisory:
Users with view permission in a space can copy and save a page
Vulnerability
A user who has only view permissions in a space can copy a page and then save it in the space. In this
way, users can create a page in a space where they have only view permission.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.5. A patch is also available for Confluence 2.5.4. For more
information, including instructions on applying the patch, please see this issue report.
If you are using Confluence 2.5.4, Atlassian strongly recommends that you upgrade to Confluence 2.5.5
or apply the patch.
The input for space name and key is not validated properly - any characters are allowed. This makes a
Confluence instance vulnerable to an XSS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.5. For more information, please see this issue report.
In this advisory:
The input for the RSS Feed Builder is not required to be escaped. This can make a Confluence instance
vulnerable to an XSS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8993.
The 'Grant permission to' field on the 'Edit Space Permissions' screen is not validated. This can make a
Confluence instance vulnerable to an XSS or DoS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8980 and
CONF-8979.
There is no restriction on the number of labels that can be added to a page at a time. This can make a
Confluence instance vulnerable to a DoS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8978.
The 'Navigation Page' specified in the 'Left Navigation Theme' configuration is not validated. This can
make a Confluence instance vulnerable to a XSS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8956.
When viewing space content by alphabetic character, the input is not validated as being alphabetic. This
can make a Confluence instance vulnerable to an XSS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8952.
The 'Name' field on the 'Edit Space Details' screen is not validated. This can make a Confluence instance
vulnerable to an XSS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8951.
The 'Filter By Extension' field on the 'List Space Attachments' screen is not validated. This can make a
Confluence instance vulnerable to an XSS attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.5.6. For more information, please see CONF-8950.
In this advisory:
Atlassian recommends that you upgrade to Confluence 2.6.1 to fix the vulnerabilities described below.
Debug mode was enabled by default on Direct Web Remoting (DWR). This made it easy for a potential
attacker to find information about available AJAX request handlers in Confluence.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.6.1. If you do not wish to upgrade at this time, you can fix
the problem by editing your <confluence install>/confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml file. For more
information, please see CONF-9718.
The attributes and parameters were not escaped on the Confluence exception error page. This is a
potential vulnerability to a cross-site scripting attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.6.1. For more information, please see CONF-9704 and
CONF-9560.
The print icon on the HTTP 404 error page uses the path of the requested URL, which potentially contains
malicious JavaScript. The 404 page did not correctly escape it. This is a potential vulnerability to a cross-
site scripting attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.6.1. A patch is supplied for customers with Confluence version
2.6 who do not wish to upgrade at this time. For more information, please see CONF-9456.
When using image URLs in wiki markup, quotes were not correctly escaped. This is a potential
vulnerability to a cross-site scripting attack.
Fix
This issue has been fixed in Confluence 2.6.1. For customers with Confluence 2.6 who do not with to
upgrade at this time, the new atlassian-renderer JAR should resolve this issue. For more information,
please see CONF-9209.
In this advisory:
Atlassian rates this vulnerability as HIGH, according to the scale published by the SANS Institute. The
scale allows us to rank a vulnerability as critical, high, moderate or low, as described in the SANS
vulnerability analysis.
Risk Assessment
We have identified and fixed some security flaws which may affect Confluence instances in a public
environment. These flaws are XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerabilities in some of Confluence's macros
and Wiki Markup, which potentially allow a malicious user (hacker) to insert their own HTML tags or script
into a Confluence page.
• The hacker might take advantage of this flaw to steal other users' session cookies or other
credentials, by sending the credentials back to the hacker's own web server.
• The hacker's text and script might be displayed to other people viewing the Confluence page. This is
potentially damaging to your company's reputation.
Atlassian recommends that you upgrade to Confluence 2.6.2 to fix the vulnerabilities described below.
You can read more about XSS attacks at cgisecurity, CERT and other places on the web.
Risk Mitigation
If you judge it necessary, you can disable public access (e.g. anonymous access and public signon) to
your wiki until you have applied the necessary patch or upgrade. For even tighter control, you could
restrict access to trusted groups only.
Vulnerability
• {color}
• {panel}
• {section}
• {column}
• {code}
The Wiki Markup for inserting images (e.g. !myImage.png!) is also vulnerable to XSS exploitation.
Fix
The fix is to escape all user input, so that no user input is interpreted as HTML or CSS. In some cases we
also perform stricter validation on the range of values a user can supply in an attribute.
These issues have been fixed in Confluence 2.6.2. For more information, please see CONF-9350.
Our thanks to Igor Minar, who reported this issue to Atlassian. We fully support the reporting of
vulnerabilities and we appreciate his working with us towards identifying and solving the problem.
Please let us know what you think of the format of this security advisory and the information we have
provided.
Atlassian rates this vulnerability as HIGH, according to the scale published by the SANS Institute. The
scale allows us to rank a vulnerability as critical, high, moderate or low, as described in the SANS
vulnerability analysis.
Risk Assessment
We have identified and fixed a security flaw which may affect Confluence instances in a public
environment. This flaw is an XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerability in a Confluence action, which
potentially allows a malicious user (hacker) to embed their own JavaScript into a Confluence page.
• The hacker might take advantage of this flaw to steal other users' session cookies or other
credentials, by sending the credentials back to the hacker's own web server.
• The hacker's text and script might be displayed to other people viewing the Confluence page. This is
potentially damaging to your company's reputation.
To fix the vulnerabilities described below, Atlassian recommends that you take one of the following steps:
You can read more about XSS attacks at cgisecurity, CERT and other places on the web.
Risk Mitigation
If you judge it necessary, you can disable public access (e.g. anonymous access and public signon) to
your wiki until you have applied the necessary patch or upgrade. For even tighter control, you could
restrict access to trusted groups only.
Vulnerability
A hacker can inject their own JavaScript into the following Confluence action:
http://www.anyhost.com/confluence/dashboard/configurerssfeed.action
The above Confluence action is used to build an RSS feed based on your Confluence pages and news
items. The action is invoked when a selects 'Feed Builder' from your Confluence Dashboard. It can also be
invoked by simply entering the URL into the browser address bar.
Fix
These issues have been fixed in Confluence 2.7, which you can download from the download centre.
A patch is available for Confluence 2.5.8 and Confluence 2.6.2. For more information, please see
CONF-10164.
Our thanks to jeff peichel, who reported this issue to Atlassian. We fully support the reporting of
vulnerabilities and we appreciate his working with us towards identifying and solving the problem.
Please let us know what you think of the format of this security advisory and the information we have
provided.
In this advisory:
Atlassian rates this vulnerability as HIGH, according to the scale published by the SANS Institute. The
scale allows us to rank a vulnerability as critical, high, moderate or low, as described in the SANS
vulnerability analysis.
Risk Assessment
We have identified and fixed a security flaw which may affect Confluence instances in a public
environment. This flaw is an XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerability in a Confluence action, which
potentially allows a malicious user (hacker) to embed their own JavaScript into a Confluence page.
• The hacker might take advantage of this flaw to steal other users' session cookies or other
credentials, by sending the credentials back to the hacker's own web server.
• The hacker's text and script might be displayed to other people viewing the Confluence page. This is
potentially damaging to your company's reputation.
To fix the vulnerabilities described below, Atlassian recommends that you take one of the following steps:
You can read more about XSS attacks at cgisecurity, CERT and other places on the web.
Risk Mitigation
If you judge it necessary, you can disable public access (e.g. anonymous access and public signon) to
your wiki until you have applied the necessary patch or upgrade. For even tighter control, you could
restrict access to trusted groups only.
Vulnerability
A hacker can inject their own JavaScript into the following Confluence action:
http://confluence-location/dashboard.action?spacesSelectedTab
The above Confluence action is used to determine which spaces are listed on a user's Dashboard. For
example, the following URL requests a list of team spaces only:
http://confluence-location/dashboard.action?spacesSelectedTab=team
The action is invoked when a user selects one of the 'Spaces' tabs on the Dashboard, such as the 'Team'
tab. It can also be invoked by simply entering the URL into the browser address bar.
Fix
These issues have been fixed in Confluence 2.7.1 (see the release notes), which you can download from
the download centre.
A patch is available for Confluence 2.6.2 and Confluence 2.7.0. For more information, please see
CONF-10289.
Please let us know what you think of the format of this security advisory and the information we have
provided.
In this advisory:
Atlassian rates this vulnerability as HIGH, according to the scale published by the SANS Institute. The
scale allows us to rank a vulnerability as critical, high, moderate or low, as described in the SANS
vulnerability analysis.
• You might rank this vulnerability as CRITICAL, because in most installations the vulnerability will
allow anonymous users to delete information.
• We have chosen a ranking of HIGH, because the vulnerability does not allow privilege escalation i.e.
it doesn't allow users to gain administration privileges.
Risk Assessment
We have identified and fixed a security flaw which allowed users who have 'View' permission (or higher)
on a space to purge (delete) any page in that space.
The following Confluence versions are vulnerable: All versions from 1.3 to 2.7.1 inclusive.
To fix the vulnerabilities described below, Atlassian recommends that you take one of the following steps:
Risk Mitigation
If you judge it necessary, you can disable public access (e.g. anonymous access and public signon) to
your wiki until you have applied the necessary patch or upgrade. For even tighter control, you could
restrict access to trusted groups only.
• As a temporary measure, you can block the URL which allows someone to purge (delete) a page.
Please ask your website administrator to block the URL described below.
• The impact is that Space Administrators will not be able to purge individual pages or news items.
However, Space Administrators can still use the 'Purge All' link to clear the entire contents of Trash.
Vulnerability
Description:
A user can use the following Confluence action to permanently delete (purge) any Confluence page,
provided that the user has 'View' permission (or higher) in the space to which the page belongs:
http://confluence-location/pages/purgetrashitem.action?key=XXX&contentId=XXX
The above action is invoked when a space administrator clicks the 'Purge' link on the space's 'Trash' page
next to a wiki page which has already been deleted.
The action can also be invoked by simply entering the URL into the browser address bar. In this way, it is
possible for a user with 'View' permission (or higher) to remove a page via the 'Purge' action, even if the
page has not been deleted.
These issues have been fixed in Confluence 2.7.2 (see the release notes), which you can download from
the download centre.
A patch is available for Confluence 2.6.x, Confluence 2.7.0 and Confluence 2.7.1. For more information,
please see CONF-10807.
Our thanks to Neeraj Jhanji, who reported this issue to Atlassian. We fully support the reporting of
vulnerabilities and we appreciate his working with us towards identifying and solving the problem.
In this advisory:
Atlassian rates these vulnerabilities as HIGH, according to the scale published by the SANS Institute.
The scale allows us to rank a vulnerability as critical, high, moderate or low, as described in the SANS
vulnerability analysis.
Risk Assessment
We have identified and fixed a number of security flaws which may affect Confluence instances in a public
environment. The flaws are all XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerabilities in various Confluence actions.
Each vulnerability potentially allows a malicious user (hacker) to embed their own JavaScript into a
Confluence page.
• The hacker might take advantage of the flaw to steal other users' session cookies or other
credentials, by sending the credentials back to the hacker's own web server.
• The hacker's text and script might be displayed to other people viewing the Confluence page. This is
potentially damaging to your company's reputation.
To fix the vulnerabilities described below, Atlassian recommends that you take one of the following steps:
You can read more about XSS attacks at cgisecurity, CERT and other places on the web.
Risk Mitigation
If you judge it necessary, you can disable public access (e.g. anonymous access and public signon) to
your wiki until you have applied the necessary patch or upgrade. For even tighter control, you could
restrict access to trusted groups only.
Vulnerability
A hacker can inject their own JavaScript into the Confluence actions listed in the table below. Each of
the actions is invoked when a user performs a specific function in Confluence, such as clicking a link or a
button. The actions can also be invoked by simply entering the URL into the browser address bar.
For more details please refer to the related JIRA issue, also shown in the table below.
Fix
These issues have been fixed in Confluence 2.7.3 (see the release notes), which you can download from
the download centre.
Patches are available for Confluence 2.6.x. For more information, please refer to the specific JIRA issues
shown in the table of vulnerabilities above.
Our thanks to the people who reported some of the vulnerabilities listed above. We fully support the
reporting of vulnerabilities and we appreciate their working with us towards identifying and solving the
problem.
If you would like to secure the confluence webapp to make sure plugins (or other code executed) cannot
access unwanted system resources, the following will restrict file system access.
grant {
permission java.util.PropertyPermission "*", "read,write";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "*:-", "connect,accept,listen";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/tangosol-coherence-override.xml","read";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/tangosol-coherence-override-prod.xml","read";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/path/to/confluenceWebapp/-","read,write";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/path/to/confluence.home","read,write,delete";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/path/to/confluence.home/-","read,write,delete";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/path/to/resin/lib/-","read";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/tmp", "read";
permission java.io.FilePermission "/tmp/*", "read,write,delete";
permission java.io.FilePermission "quartz.properties", "read";
permission java.util.logging.LoggingPermission "control";
permission java.awt.AWTPermission "*";
permission java.lang.reflect.ReflectPermission "suppressAccessChecks";
permission java.io.SerializablePermission "*";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "*";
permission java.net.NetPermission "*";
permission ognl.OgnlInvokePermission "*";
};
-Djava.security.manager -Djava.security.policy=/path/to/.java.policy
Of course you might be able to get away with less - please edit with any improvements you have!
Nofollow Support
As part of the effort to combat the spamming of wikis and blogs (Confluence being both), Google came
up with some markup which instructs search-engines not to follow links. By removing the main benefit of
wiki-spamming it's hoped that the practice will stop being cost-effective and eventually die out.
By default, all URLs inserted in a page (or in comments) will be given the nofollow tag. Inter-page links
(i.e. Documentation Home) or shortcut links (i.e. CONF-2622@JIRA) will not be tagged.
The site administrator can turn the feature off in General Configuration.
• Themes Configuration
° Applying a Theme To A Site
° Creating a Theme
- Adding a theme icon
° Customising the Left Navigation Theme
° Deploying the theme as a plugin
° Including Cascading Stylesheets in Themes
° Modifying Look and Feel (for themes)
- Configuring the theme plugin
° Themes Overview
Confluence is built on top of the Open Source SiteMesh library, a web-page layout system that provides
a consistent look and feel across a site. SiteMesh works through "decorators" that define a page's layout
and structure, and into which the specific content of the page is placed. If you are interested, you can
read more on the SiteMesh website.
What this means for Confluence is that you can customise the look and feel of almost all of your
Confluence site through editing three decorators:
• The "Main" decorator defines the look and feel of most pages on the site
• The "Popup" decorator defines the look and feel of the popup windows such as the "Insert Link" and
"History" pages.
• The "Printable" decorator defines the look and feel of the printable versions of pages (available
through the Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. icon on each page)
You can view and edit these decorators from within Confluence: they are available from the "Layouts"
option on the site's Administration menu. Changes to the decorators will affect all spaces hosted on that
Confluence installation.
The decorator that is used to draw Confluence's administrative pages can not be edited from within
Confluence. This means that if you make some editing mistake that renders the rest of the site
unuseable, the administrative pages should still be available for you to fix the template.
At any time, you can browse the default decorators that come packaged with Confluence by following
the "View Default" links on the "Site Layouts" page. The template browser also allows you to view the
"#parsed" templates that are included within the template when it is compiled. While you can't edit these
included templates, you will probably have to copy some or all of them into your custom template as you
do your customisation.
To edit Confluence decorators, you should have a good knowledge of HTML, and some understanding of
the Velocity templating language.
The first thing you will see when you choose to create a custom "Main" decorator is... there's not much to
edit. By default, most of the content of this decorator is included from other files:
<html>
<head>
<title>$title - Confluence</title>
#standardHeader()
</head>
<body onload="placeFocus()">
<div id="Content">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="60%" rowspan=2 class="logocell">#pagetitle("spacenametitle")</td>
#breadcrumbsAndSearch()
#if ($page.getProperty("page.surtitle"))
$page.getProperty("page.surtitle")
#end
#if (!$page.getProperty("page.no-page-header"))
<div class="pageheader">
<span class="pagetitle">$title</span>
</div>
#end
$body
</td>
#parse ("/decorators/includes/complete_footer.vmd")
When you insert this into the right section of the template and hit save, visitors to the site will see the
logo at the top of each page. Note, the administrative pages will be unaffected: you will have to go to the
dashboard or to a space to see the changes you have made.
Macros
Some parts of the page are drawn using Velocity macros, including the navigation bar. The macros you
should know about when editing decorators are described in Decorator Macros
From the "Site Layouts" page in Confluence's administrative menu, you can delete your custom
templates. When you do this, the default template will be restored, fixing anything that may have been
broken.
Alternatively, the custom templates are stored inside the confluence.home directory you defined in
confluence-init.properties when installing Confluence. If you have somehow managed to render
Confluence completely unuseable through editing your templates, simply delete the confluence.home/
velocity directory, and restart Confluence. The default templates will be restored.
WARNING: Only delete the velocity directory! Changing anything else inside your confluence.home is
dangerous, and you could lose important data!
The velocity directory is at the front of Confluence's velocity template search path. As such, you can
override any of Confluence's velocity templates by placing an identically named file in the right place.
While we don't recommend you do this unless you know exactly what you're doing, it does give you
complete control over the look of every aspect of Confluence. It also means that you can edit your
templates in a text-editor if you wish, rather than through the web interface.
1. Velocity is configured to cache templates in memory. When you edit a page from within Confluence,
it knows to reload that page from disk. If you are editing the pages on disk, you will either have to
turn off velocity's caching temporarily in WEB-INF/classes/velocity.properties, or restart the
server to make your changes visible.
2. Because we only officially support the modification of the three global decorator files, other changes
may interact unpredictably with future versions of Confluence. When upgrading, you should always
test your custom modifications thoroughly before deploying them on a live site.
You can customise the 'look and feel' of Confluence at both the global and space levels.
Any changes you make to the look and feel of the site at the global level will be applied as the default
look and feel for all the spaces in the site. This means that any customisations will only be reflected in
the "Default" theme. No other theme will have an impact from this change. An individual space can be
configured to have its own look and feel through the space administration screens.
Here's how you can customise the look and feel of your site:
RELATED TOPICS
A Confluence administrator can configure a new colour scheme for the site dynamically from the
Administration Console.
The default colour scheme for the site will also become the default for all spaces within it. However, it
is possible for space administrators to configure a different colour scheme for spaces from the space
administration screens.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Colour Scheme' in the left-hand panel.
This will bring up a new screen. See screenshot below.
2. Click 'EDIT'. Enter standard HTML/CSS2 colour codes, or use the colour-picker
to choose a new
colour from the palette provided. Any changes you make will immediately be reflected across the
Confluence installation.
• Top Bar - the bar across the top of the page that contains the breadcrumbs
• Tab Navigation Background - the background colour of the tab navigation menus
• Tab Navigation Text - the text of the tab navigation menus
• Breadcrumbs Text - the breadcrumbs text in the top bar of the page
• Space Name Text - the text of the current space name located above the page title
• Heading Text - all heading tags throughout the space.
• Links - all links throughout the space.
• Borders and Dividers - table borders and dividing lines.
• Tab Navigation Background Highlight - the background colour of the tab navigation menu when
highlighted
• Tab Navigation Text Highlight - the text of the tab navigation menu when highlighted
• Top Bar Menu Selected Background - the background colour of the top bar drop down menu when
selected
• Top Bar Menu Item - the text colour of the menu items in the top bar drop down menu
• Page Menu Selected Background - the background colour of the drop down page menu when
selected
• Page Menu Item Text - the text of the menu items in the drop down page menu
• Menu Item Selected Background - the background colour of the menu item when selected (applies
to both the top bar and page drop down menus)
• Menu Item Selected Text - the text colour of the menu item when selected (applies to both the top
bar and page drop down menus)
Please note that some UI elements are specific to the default theme and may not take affect for other
themes.
RELATED TOPICS
You can customise the layout of your Confluence instance by editing the 'decorators' that define the look
and feel of the site.
Confluence is built on top of the open source SiteMesh library, a web-page layout system. Read more
on the SiteMesh website. To edit the layout of Confluence, you will need to modify these decorator files.
A decorator file is a .vmd file and is written in a very simple programming language called Velocity.
Learn more about Velocity. Once you become familiar with Velocity, you can edit the decorator files to
personalise the appearance of Confluence.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
• You can customise the layouts for a particular space or for the whole site. This page tells you
how to customise layouts for the site as a whole. To customise the layouts for a space, use the
'Layout' menu on the 'Space Admin' page.
• When you upgrade Confluence, you must reapply your custom layouts to the newly installed
default layouts.
• Site layouts : These are used to define the controls that surround each page in the site. For
example, the header and the footer.
• Content layouts : These control the appearance of content such as pages and news items: they
don't change the way the pages themselves are displayed, but allow you to alter the way the
surrounding comments or attachments are displayed.
• Export Layouts: These control the appearance of spaces and pages when they are exported to
HTML. If you are using Confluence to generate a static website, for example, you will need to modify
these layouts.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Layouts' under 'Look and Feel' in the left-hand
navigation panel. The decorators are grouped under Site, Content and Group layouts.
• Click 'View Default' to view the vmd file.
• Click 'Create Custom' to edit the default vmd file. This will open up the vmd file in edit mode.
2. Make changes and click 'Update'.
If something goes wrong : Click 'Reset Default' to revert to the original layouts.
When editing Custom Decorator Templates, there are a number of macros available to define complex or
variable parts of the page such as menus and breadcrumbs. You may insert these macros anywhere in
your templates. More information on Working With Decorator Macros.
The velocity directory is at the front of Confluence's velocity template search path. As such, you can
override any of Confluence's velocity templates by placing an identically named file in the right place.
While we don't recommend you do this unless you know exactly what you're doing, it does give you
complete control over the look of every aspect of Confluence. It also means that you can edit your
templates in a text-editor if you wish, rather than through the web interface.
WARNING
Some of the Velocity template files (files whose names end in .vm) were moved inside the main
confluence-<version>.jar file with the release of Confluence 2.6.0 (i.e. $CONFLUENCE_INSTALL/
confluence/WEB-INF/lib/confluence-2.6.jar in version 2.6). If you are unfamiliar with editing
the contents of a .jar file, you may find these instructions useful. This is mostly relevant to those
wishing to customise email or export templates.
Alternatively Java Servlet Technology allows you to use an unpacked version of the desired file in
the WEB_INF/classes directory. Make sure you reproduce the exact directory (package) structure.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence pages can be set to include a left-hand navigation sidebar (table of contents) as shown below:
You will need to use the pagetree macro, which is part of the PageTree plugin. This plugin is not
shipped with Confluence, so you will need to install it onto your Confluence instance first. Please
note also that the plugin is not currently supported by Atlassian. Read more about supported
plugins.
Follow the instructions below to add this sidebar to an individual space or across the entire site.
{livesearch:spaceKey=SPACEKEY}
Note - Make sure to replace 'SPACEKEY' in the above code with the appropriate key of the space you
wish to search.
{pagetree}
Note - With the pagetree macro, you can specify the root of the pagetree.
3. Further information on the pagetree macro can be found here.
1. To do this, you must have Space Administrative rights on the given space.
2. Browse the space.
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
3. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab.
4. Make sure the Confluence Default theme is selected from the 'Themes' menu.
5. Click 'Layout' under the 'Look and Feel' section.
6. Click 'Create Custom' under the 'Page Layout' section.
7. Replace a section of the layout as described below, then save the updated layout.
<div class="wiki-content">
$body
</div>
</style>
<table>
<tr>
<td valign="top" align="left" width="22%" >
<div class="tabletitle">Space Search</div>
<div class="spacetree">
#includePage($helper.spaceKey "SearchNavigation")
</div>
<div class="tabletitle">Table of Contents</div>
<div class="spacetree">
#includePage($helper.spaceKey "TreeNavigation")
</div>
</td>
<td valign="top" align="left" width="78%">
<div class="wiki-content">
<blockquote>
$body
</blockquote>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
#else
<div class="wiki-content">
$body
</div>
</style>
As Confluence evolves, so do the default layouts that drive the rendering of every page. As new
functionality is added or current functionally is changed, the default layouts are modified to support these
changes.
If you are using custom layouts based on defaults from a previous Confluence version, you run the
risk of breaking functionality, or worse, missing out on great new features!
Take care on each new release of Confluence to reapply your changes to the new default templates.
1. Obtain the source of your custom layout from your current version of Confluence.
2. Reapply your customisations to the new default layouts.
With Confluence 2.3 and later, custom layouts are stored in the DECORATOR table within your Confluence
database. You can SELECT for the source of the layout using SQL like this:
This example was tested on MySQL, but should be relevant for all SQL databases.
Use the documentation on customising layouts to create a new custom layout and use the source
obtained in step 1 to manually reintegrate them.
Velocity is configured to cache templates in memory. When you edit a page from within Confluence, it
knows to reload that page from disk. If you are editing the pages on disk, you will either have to turn off
velocity's caching temporarily in WEB-INF/classes/velocity.properties, or restart the server to make
your changes visible.
For Confluence 2.6, the velocity.properties file is available in the confluence-2.6.0.jar file. The jar
file is located in the WEB-INF/lib directory. If you wish to make modification to the files in the jar, we
recommend the following steps:
1. Stop Confluence.
2. Make a backup copy of the jar file.
3. Un-jar the file
4. Locate and edit the appropriate file that you wish to modify.
5. Re-jar the confluence-2.6.0.jar file.
6. Relocate the jar file to the appropriate directory.
7. Restart Confluence.
A template is a pre-defined page that can be used as a prototype when creating new pages. Templates
are useful for giving pages a common style or format.
Global Templates are defined by Confluence administrators and are available in every space across the
site.
Templates are written in regular Confluence markup, using special markup to define form fields that need
to be filled in.
1. Go to the Administration Console and click 'Global templates' in the left navigation panel.
2. Click 'Add new global template'.
3. Enter a name for your template in the 'Name' text field and an optional description in the
'Description' text field.
4. Using regular Confluence markup and form field markup (if you are using forms), enter content in
the text-entry box as you would in any other Confluence page.
5. Click 'edit' next to 'Labels' if you want to use labels to categorise information. Add your labels. These
labels will be included in all pages created using this template.
6. Preview and click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
Decorator Macros are Velocity macros which are used to draw complex or variable parts of the page such
as menus and breadcrumbs when editing Custom decorators. Decorator macros can be inserted anywhere
in your templates.
NOTE: These macros will only work reliably when customising main.vmd. They may not work in other
Velocity decorators. Decorator macros will not work inside normal confluence pages.
Macro Usage
#breadcrumbs() Draws the "You are here" breadcrumbs list, like
the one found above the page name in the default
template.
#includePage(pageTitle) Includes a confluence page with the specified title. If
you have 2 or more pages with the same title across
multiple spaces, this macro will include the page
belonging to the space you are currently viewing.
#searchbox() Inserts a search box into the page, like the one
to the far right of the breadcrumbs in the default
template.
#globalnavbar(type) Draws the global navigation bar, as found in the
top right-hand corner of the default template. The
navigation bar can be displayed in two modes:
#globalnavbar("table") Displays the navigation bar in its default mode:
drawn as a table of links with coloured backgrounds
and mouse-over effects.
#globalnavbar("text") Displays the navigation bar as series of text links
separated by | characters.
#usernavbar() Draws the user-specific navigation-bar. This bar
contains the links to the user's profile and history,
or to the login and signup pages if the user is not
logged in.
#helpicon() Draws the Cannot resolve external resource into
attachment. help icon, and link to the Confluence
help page.
#printableicon() On pages where a printable version is available,
draws the Cannot resolve external resource into
attachment. printable page icon, linking to the
printable version of the page. Otherwise, draws
nothing
#pagetitle(class) When you are viewing a page in a Confluence
space, draws the name of the space that page is
in. Otherwise, writes the word "CONFLUENCE".The
"class" argument is the CSS class that the title
should be drawn in. Unless you have customised
your Confluence installation's CSS file, you should
call this with "spacenametitle" as the class:
#pagetitle("spacenametitle")
#poweredby() Writes out the "Powered by Confluence" and
Confluence version-number boilerplate found at the
bottom of the default template.
#bottomshadow() Draws the fading shadow-effect found at the bottom
of the content area in the default template.
#dashboardlink() Inserts a link to the dashboard page.
RELATED TOPICS
• Themes Overview
Themes can be installed as plugins. Once a theme has been installed, a Confluence administrator can
apply it via the Administration Console. Once installed, themes become available to be applied across a
site or to individual spaces. Any theme applied at the global level will become the default theme for all
spaces in the site.
Confluence 2.6 introduced a fresh, clean look for the Default theme. If you prefer the original
Confluence look and feel, select the Confluence Classic Theme.
1. Ensure that the theme plugin you wish to apply has been installed.
2. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Themes' under 'Look and Feel' in the left navigation
panel.
3. If there are any themes installed, they will be listed here.
4. Select a theme and click 'Confirm'.
RELATED TOPICS
• Modifying the look and feel of Confluence: Work with the different components that define the look
and feel of Confluence and modify them to suit your theme:
° Layout
° Colour Scheme (optional)
° Stylesheet (optional)
• Configuring the atlassian-plugin.xml file: Edit the central configuration file for the theme plugin to
reference the new files defining your theme.
• Adding a theme icon: Add a preview icon for your theme.
• Deploying the theme as a plugin : Bundle the files into a jar file and deploy the theme as a plugin
into Confluence.
RELATED TOPICS
A theme icon can be packed with a theme to give the user a little preview on how the theme will change
the layout of Confluence. If you do not specify a custom icon for your theme, a default icon will be shown
in the preview.
To include an icon in the theme, you will need to reference it as a Downloadable Plugin Resource from
within the theme module.
Here is an example where an icon called my-theme-icon.gif is being used in the Dinosaur Theme:
•
Name: The name of the icon ( has to be themeicon.gif).
• Type: The type of resource-in this instance, 'download'.
• Location: The location of the file represented in the jar archive you will use to bundle your theme.
The icon will automaticly appear on the themes screen in the space and global administration and will be
displayed next to the text and description of the theme.
In order to keep the look and feel of the icons consistent, we recommend to base the icon style on icons
shipped with the Confluence themes. A good starting point when creating new icons is to use the default
theme icon or the left navigation theme icon:
RELATED TOPICS
Introduction
Confluence comes bundled with the Left Navigation theme. This theme has a navigation menu on the left-
hand side of the screen, which can be customised to contain additional links, sections and even macros.
By default, the left-navigation theme just displays the space icon (or profile icon for a personal space),
and three menus: page operations, browse space, and add content.
To add your own content to the top, create a page in your space called 'Navigation'. Put content there
that you want to appear on the left navigation menu.
A couple of tips:
Examples
* [Google|http://www.google.com]
This will give a left navigation menu like the image on the side of this page.
You can see another example of customised left-navigation theme on the Codegeist space with its
associated Navigation page.
See Also
To insert an expandable/collapsible left navigation menu, see the PageTree Plugin. Note that this looks
better on the 'Default' theme rather than on the 'Left Navigation Theme'.
This documentation is only applicable to Confluence 2.5.x and earlier. To create a new plugin in
Confluence 2.6 and later, please refer to Writing Confluence Plugins.
In order to deploy your custom Confluence theme, you will have to have Ant installed. To learn how to
install and use Ant, please follow the instructions on the projects website.
To deploy the theme, execute the following command from within the theme directory in your Confluence
installation:
For example to build a theme with the name dinosaur, you will have to type:
You will find the build jar of the dinosaur theme in you Confluence install directory under .../themes/
dinosaur/dist_ directory.
To install the theme you can simply drop the previously created .jar file into the .../confluence/WEB-
INF/lib directory in your Confluence installation as described under Installing and Configuring Plugins.
As a second option, you can also call the following ant command instead of the one found above to install
the theme and copy the jar automatically in the appropriate directory.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen.
• There are three time and date format settings:
° Time Format : determines the time format for when each news item is posted
° Date Time Format : determines date and time format for historical versions of pages.
° Date Format : determines date and time format for all new and modified content.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence allows you to integrate your own stylesheets within the theme plugin so you can have
greater control over the appearance of your site. Confluence's main stylesheet is a useful reference when
overriding styles and can be found in the Confluence install directory under ...confluence/styles/
site-css.vm.
To make a stylesheet available to a decorator, you will need to reference it as a resource from within the
central configuration file - atlassian-plugin.xml.
Here is an example where a stylesheet is being used to define the 'leftnavigation' theme:
To reference the stylesheet in the decorator, you will need to use the #pluginStylesheet velocity macro.
For example, here's how you reference the leftnav.css file defined in the layout entry above:
#pluginStylesheet("com.atlassian.confluence.themes.leftnavigation:main" "leftnav.css")
• completePluginKey: The complete plugin key which is constructed from the pluginkey and the layout
key like this: {pluginKey}:{layoutKey}
In the above example, com.atlassian.confluence.themes.leftnavigation is the key of the
plugin, and main is the key of the layout.
• stylesheetName: the name of the stylesheet
If you place your stylesheet after the #standardHeader macro in the decorator, the contents of your
custom stylesheet will override those in Confluence's default stylesheet.
If your stylesheet needs to reference the colour scheme, you need to use the space stylesheet macro
instead:
#pluginSpaceStylesheet("com.atlassian.confluence.themes.leftnavigation:main" "leftnav.css"
$spaceKey)
You can then use colour scheme references in your stylesheet, similar to Confluence's stylesheets, and
they will be replaced with the appropriate global or space-specific colour scheme:
RELATED TOPICS
Here's how you can define a new look and feel for Confluence in your theme:
1. Layout : Edit Confluence's layout by modifying the decorator files that are used to define it.
• Working with Decorators
• Velocity Template Overview
• Configuring the atlassian.plugin.xml file to reference the decorators
2. Colour schemes : Configure a new colour scheme for your theme. Optional
• Configuring a new colour scheme
• Configuring the atlassian.plugin.xml file to include the new colour scheme
3. Stylesheet : Include a stylesheet to define your theme. Optional
Note that for every component you edit, you will need to configure the atlassian-plugin.xml
which is the central configuration file for the plugin to override the default files with the new files you've
created.
Confluence comes bundled with a set of decorator or VMD files that you can customize. Broadly these are
categorised into Site, Content and Export decorators. These are further grouped into categories called
contexts and under each context has various modes (ways of viewing the context).
To make editing easier, layout for similar screens (example: view and edit page screens) is configured
through the same VMD file. So, if you want to customize how the Confluence View Page Screen or Edit
Page Screen looks, you can make both of these changes inside one decorator file: page.vmd.
For example, if you wanted to remove the 'Attachments' tab on the view page screen, you would make
this layout change in the page.vmd file - where the 'view' mode is handled (as shown below).
#*
Display page based on mode: currently 'view', 'edit', 'preview-edit', 'info' and 'attachments.
See the individual page templates (viewpage.vm, editpage.vm, etc.) for the setting of the mode
parameter.
*#
## VIEW
#if ($mode == "view")
#elseif ...
The easiest way to begin configuring a new layout is by copying the default decorator files and editing
them to suit your theme.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on Layouts in the left panel. This will display options to
view and edit the default decorators.
2. Copy the files that you intend to modify and place them in a directory structure that makes sense to
you. See example below.
You should place your decorators in a directory hierarchy which makes sense to you. We recommend
that you place the atlassian-plugin.xml file at the top level of the directory structure, and then place the
decorators in directories which make a meaningful division of what they do.
Here is an example:
atlassian-plugin.xml
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/global.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/space.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/mail.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/blogpost.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/main.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/mytheme/page.vmd
To edit the decorators, you will require knowledge of a very simple programming language called Velocity.
Learn more about Velocity.
Decorator Macros
When editing the decorators, you will need to use Decorator Macros to draw complex or variable parts of
the page such as menus and breadcrumbs. See Working With Decorator Macros
When editing decorator files you will also come across a variable called $helper - this is the theme helper
object.
Behaviour Explanation
$helper.domainName displays the base URL of your Confluence instance
on your page. This is useful for constructing links to
your own Confluence pages.
$helper.spaceKey returns the current space key or null if in a global
context.
$helper.spaceName returns the name of the current space
$helper.renderConfluenceMacro("{create-space- renders a call to a Confluence Macro for the velocity
button}") context
$helper.getText("key.key1") looks up a key in a properties file matching
If you are on a page or space screen you also have access to the actual page and space object by using
$helper.page and $helper.space respectively.
If you want to deliver more into what other methods are available in this object, please see our API's for
ThemeHelper.
Step Four: Configuring the central configuration file to reference the new decorators
The easiest way to configure a colour scheme is to do it dynamically from the Administration Console (as
you would normally when you want to change the site's colour scheme online), and then express it as
an xml file. This method makes it possible for you to experiment with different colours and test them out
before including the colour scheme in your theme.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Colour scheme' in the left panel.
2. Use the colour picker to define the colours for the following UI elements:
• Top Bar - the bar across the top of the page that contains the breadcrumbs.
• Space Name Text - the text of the current space name located above the page title.
• Heading Text - all heading tags throughout the space.
• Links - all links throughout the space.
• Borders and Dividers - table borders and dividing lines.
• Menu Bar Background - background of top navigational buttons
Once, you have decided on the colours for the different UI elements, you will need to configure the
atlassian.plugin.xml to include the new colour scheme. How to do this is explained in detail in Configuring
the theme plugin.
RELATED TOPICS
Each plugin is described in its own atlassian-plugin.xml file, which specifies attributes of the plugin,
including a description of each module it contains. Once you have modified the different components to
define a new look and feel for your theme, you will need to configure this file so Confluence knows where
to look when overriding the default files.
The easiest way to begin is by copying the atlassian-plugin.xml from one of the default themes bundled
with confluence and modifying it for your theme.
The structure of an atlassian-plugin.xml file is fairly self-explanatory. In the code segment below you will
find a full example of an atlassian-plugin.xml:
</atlassian-plugin>
Plugin information
plugin key : Specify a key that uniquely identifies the plugin, eg. com.example.themes.dinosaur
Theme information
name : Give the theme a name. Make sure that you replace all instances of the theme name with this
name.
colour-scheme key : A theme can contain an optional colour-scheme element that defines which colour-
scheme module this theme will use. If you are using a new colour scheme, enter its key.
layout key : A theme can contain any number of layout elements that define which layouts should be
applied in this theme. Refer to these modules by their module complete key as shown above.
You will need to add a layout entity as shown below for each of the decorators you are using. See working
with decorators
class : The class which each decorator, or layout, is mapped to must implement
com.atlassian.confluence.themes.VelocityDecorator.
overrides : The layout entry must provide an overrides attribute which defines which decorator within
Confluence is being overrridden by the theme.
Location : Specify the location of the new decorator file, so Confluence know where to look when
overriding the default decorator.
It is possible for a theme to use modules that aren't in the same plugin as the theme. Just keep in
mind that your theme will be messed up if the plugin that the theme depends on is removed.
Colour schemes can be pre-configured for your theme dynamically from the Administration Console. See
configuring colour schemes
To transport them within a theme however, they need to be expressed in the atlassian-plugin.xml file
as shown above.
colour-scheme key : Specify a key that uniquely identifies the colour scheme.
colour key: For each UI element, you will need to add its name and value.
RELATED TOPICS
Themes are pre-defined styles that can be applied to alter the appearance of your site.
Use themes when you want to add new functionalities or to change the appearance of Confluence. For
example, you will need to use themes to apply a left-navigation scheme instead of the default top-
navigation scheme.
Themes are installed as plugins and added via the Administration Console. Once installed, themes can be
applied across the site or to individual spaces.
Apply a theme
Create a new theme
Include cascading stylesheets in a theme
RELATED TOPICS
The snipsnap importer allows you to import a Snip Snap XML backup file into a space in Confluence.
Snip Snap is a wiki used as a knowledge and content management tool. For more information, take
a look at the Snip Snap home page and the Wikipedia page about Snip Snap.
Some limitations:
• Currently, attachments are not imported, and Confluence does not recognise duplicate users.
• You cannot import content into multiple spaces.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
RELATED TOPICS
Importing Data
Macros allow you to perform programmatic functions within a page, and can be used for generating more
complex content structures.
Generally speaking, a macro is simply a command wrapped inside curly braces {...}. To learn how to
write your own macro, or use macros written by other people, read the Confluence Plugin Guide.
The userlister macro has an optional 'online' parameter. If the 'User Listener' plugin is configured to allow
this feature, then the page author can specify 'online=true' to show a list of all online users.
When the parameter 'online=true' is used, Confluence uses a context listener to generate the list of
online users. A context listener is a J2EE term for something that listens for events in the application
server. We listen for session open and close events, so a user is 'online' if they have a session on the
application server. Some application servers don't correctly despatch close events for sessions – in
these cases, the list of online users may be misleading.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Plugins' in the left-hand panel. This will list the
currently installed plugins.
2. Scroll down and click the 'User Listener' link. The User Listener plugin panel will appear at the top of
the screen.
3. Enable the 'User Log In Listener' module by clicking the 'Enable' link on its right.
4. Restart Confluence.
RELATED TOPICS
Userlister Macro
Macros
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'User Macros' in the left-hand panel. This will list the
currently configured user macros with options to 'Edit' or 'Remove' each macro.
• Click 'Edit'. This will display the edit screen for the macro. Make changes in the 'template' input
field and click 'Save'.
Templates are in HTML, not wiki markup.
• Click 'Remove' to delete the macro.
RELATED TOPICS
Installation
1. Install GraphViz
2. Install Apache Ant
3. If running on Windows, restart your computer
4. Instructions to insert the GraphViz installation directory path into PATH variable depend on your
operating system.
Windows Users
1. Open the directory GraphViz is installed under and confirm the path. An example path is C:
\Program Files\ATT\Graphviz\bin
2. Go to Start > Control Panel > System
3. Select the 'Advanced' tab, then 'Environment Variables'
4. Under 'System Variables', select the 'Path' variable
5. Select 'Edit' and view the 'Variable value' text
6. Confirm that path to the bin directory of GraphViz is appended to this string in the MS-DOS 8.3
standard and separated by a semicolon. An example might be ;C:\PROGRA~1\ATT\Graphviz\bin
Linux, OS X or Unix Users
1. Open the directory GraphViz is installed under and confirm the path
2. Login as the user who runs Confluence or starts the Confluence service
3. Append the path to the bin directory of GraphViz to the 'Path' variable
5. Build the GraphViz plugin from source.
2. Stop Confluence
3. Open a command window in your Confluence install directory and go to the plugins directory
4. From the plugins directory, compile the GraphViz by running ant -Dlibrary=graphviz install
5. Start Confluence
Usage
Troubleshooting
Error Message
Solution
1. Check that the system 'Path' variable includes a path to dot.exe, the executable file contained in
the Graphviz bin directory.
2. Restart Confluence server
The {html} macro allows you to use HTML code within a Confluence page.
The {html-include} macro allows you to include the contents of an HTML file in a Confluence page.
CAUTION: Including unknown HTML inside a webpage is dangerous. Because HTML can contain active
scripting components, it would be possible for a malicious attacker to present a user of your site with
script that their web browser would believe came from you. Such code could be used, for example, to
steal a user's authentication cookie and give the attacker their Confluence login password.
By default, the HTML macros are disabled. You should only turn on these macros if you trust all your
users not to attempt to exploit them.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Plugins' in the left-hand panel. This will display the
installed plugins active for this Confluence installation.
2. Click' 'HTML macros', then click 'Enable Plugin'
RELATED TOPICS
The {html-include} macro allows you to include the contents of an HTML file in a Confluence page.
CAUTION: Including unknown HTML inside a webpage is dangerous. Because HTML can contain active
scripting components, it would be possible for a malicious attacker to present a user of your site with
script that their web browser would believe came from you. Such code could be used, for example, to
steal a user's authentication cookie and give the attacker their Confluence login password.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
To enable the HTML macros,
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Plugins' in the left-hand panel. This will display the
installed plugins active for this Confluence installation.
2. Click' 'HTML macros', then click 'Enable Plugin'
Usage Example
To embed an external page:
{html-include:url=http://www.example.com}
RELATED TOPICS
Gallery Macro
Usage:
{gallery:columns=3\|title=Example Title}
{gallery}
Troubleshooting
If you encounter the following error message: System does not support thumbnails: no JDK image
support then ensure that you have following system property available for your JVM:
JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.awt.headless=true
This page gives guidelines for operational management teams who are responsible for a large Confluence
installation, or for a Confluence installation which is crucial to the business of their organisation.
On this page:
Now what?
Wikis like Confluence often grow into mission-critical applications within just a few months. Often
adoption is so fast that IT departments haven't had the time to scale up their support.
We have assembled some requirements to help you make sure that your installation of Confluence can
be mission critical. There are no surprises to be found here — all of the requirements would apply to any
other piece of software that is mission critical within your organisation.
But if any one of the following applies to you, then these guidelines are a must read for you!
But with thousands or even tens of thousands of users, you need dedicated hardware that runs
Confluence and nothing else, and it needs to be fast hardware with plenty of RAM. While you can run
Confluence in a virtualised environment such as VMware, we suggest you don't do it for mission-critical or
high-load installations unless you are a real expert in virtualisation. Otherwise your other VMs might have
performance problems which propagate to Confluence.
If you experience database-related problems, you should consider moving the Confluence database to a
dedicated machine. Confluence itself can run queries that impact the performance of other applications,
and other application problems or scheduled tasks can have an adverse affect on the usability of
Confluence.
If you require assistance from the Atlassian Support team, you may need to answer some pretty technical
questions to help us diagnose what is going on in your systems. Also keep in mind that Atlassian support
assists you in finding problems in Confluence, but we can't help you administer your systems.
In particular, we recommend that you have dedicated staff in the roles listed below.
If your organisation relies on Confluence being up and running around the clock with very little downtime,
you need people who can set up, maintain, tune and improve your Confluence installation. This requires
at least one person, but ideally you will have a team of operational engineers.
If your wiki is mission critical, chances are that other IT systems within your organisation have already
made it necessary to have such an operations team. So you will probably not need to hire someone
specifically to administrate Confluence. But it is vital that supporting and maintaining Confluence is added
to the list of responsibilities of that operations teams, and that you can get them to troubleshoot and
analyse Confluence at short notice.
If problems arise and you need to contact Atlassian Support, these engineers will be our first point of
contact. We may ask them to provide details of log files, application-server settings, monitoring systems,
and so on.
Network Staff
If Confluence is mission critical for large numbers of users, it is vital that you have dedicated network
staff available to track down problems when they arise.
A mission-critical installation will usually be used by hundreds or even thousands of users, and you
don't want to keep them waiting because a network card breaks, or because someone has made an
undocumented change to the network and you don't have an expert around who can figure it out.
Again, this only applies to mission-critical systems. If you use Confluence for less critical collaboration
and knowledge sharing, and a broken network cable causing a day's downtime is no major catastrophe,
then you will not need dedicated networking staff.
Database Staff
If Confluence is mission critical for a large number of users, you need an experienced database
administrator (DBA) available to troubleshoot database performance issues and other potential problems.
It is dangerous not to have an experienced full-time DBA at hand at short notice when running a mission
critical application. While small installations of Confluence basically work 'out of the box', any system
that involves high load or high-availability requirements needs continual monitoring, optimising and
fine tuning of the Confluence database. Database monitoring is no trivial task — it's not something that
anyone can learn quickly.
When the wiki is the lifeblood of your organisation, you need know exactly what is going on inside, so
that you can plan for future needs and analyse potential bottlenecks.
At Atlassian we use Hyperic. But the list of monitoring systems is long and we can't
recommend a specific product over the other. If your organisation has a monitoring system
already, make sure you hook up Confluence to it. If you don't have a monitoring system yet,
you need to install one as soon as you feel Confluence is mission critical.
• Keeping an access log of requests to the web server. This is vital, especially when requesting
performance-related support from Atlassian.
• Our main recommendation: Never change more than one component at a time. Sometimes it may
be tempting to upgrade the server hardware when you upgrade Confluence, but we recommend you
don't do that. It makes pinpointing errors much more difficult. So, for example, don't upgrade hard
disks in conjunction with a Confluence version upgrade, don't change the Confluence configuration
at the same time as you upgrade your Apache software, and don't upgrade a major third-party
plugin the day you move your database system to a new machine. The list is endless, these were
just a few examples to get you thinking.
• After each upgrade step, run Confluence for a couple of days to check that everything is still fine.
• Keep track diligently of what you change, and when. It will be nearly impossible for us to help you if
you can't tell us what exactly you changed at what time.
• Keep a copy of all log files produced during the upgrade, together with notes about what changed
between successive restarts.
Always take careful note of the upgrade notes published with the Release Notes of each Confluence
version, as well as the Confluence Upgrade Guide.
Before rolling out a new version of Confluence (or of the software or hardware that it uses, e.g. database
systems, application servers, data storage), make sure that you test the upgrade with real data (e.g. a
database dump) on a completely independent machine.
Here's an example of what such a test would pick up: The new release of Confluence may not be
compatible with a custom third party plugin you have previously installed, thus breaking the plugin's
functionality. You may not even know that anyone installed that plugin — but maybe many people
are already using it. You'll want to find out about this before you actually roll out the new version of
Confluence.
1. Create a clone of your production environment, using a database dump to obtain a copy of the
Confluence data. We'll call this your 'staging environment'.
2. Upgrade the staging environment to the new version of Confluence.
3. Ask a few selected users from different departments to check the pages they commonly access, but
have them do it in the staging environment.
Hint: In addition to finding weirdnesses with plugins, this may also show whether training for new
functionality is needed in some of the departments. The IT department staff may be able to handle the
upgrade to a new version of Confluence without training, but perhaps the sales representatives who use
the wiki less often will need some training.
Atlassian supplies 'developer' licenses which can be used by existing commercial license holders who
wish to deploy non-production installations of our software to use in QA/staging environments.
Developer licenses are free of charge to commercial license holders and, like our commercial
offerings, they include 12 months of updates starting from the date of purchase of the commercial
license.
If you hold a commercial license, you can obtain a free developer license by performing the
following:
Even if your system is working nicely for 20 000 users right now - it might just take another 2 000 users
to push it over the edge.
You should perform regular load testing to find out how much more load your system can take. The
Confluence development team has plenty of load-testing scripts available. Please contact Atlassian
Support for more details.
Tuning
You may need to be able to tune your installation in the ways mentioned below.
If you have large numbers of users, then downloading all the static content (CSS, default images,
JavaScript-files) may result in a high additional load on the application server that can be offloaded to a
caching web server.
You may have to restrict the number of third-party plugins installed on your Confluence instance.
Most third-party plugins are not specifically written for high-load environments. What works fine in low-
load environments could have unexpected and adverse effects when thousands of users are competing
for your application server's CPU time or for database IO.
A common source of problems is access to database connections. If you have fewer users than database
connections, it does not matter if an operation holds on to a database connection for two seconds while it
downloads some data from the internet. With hundreds of concurrent users, this could quickly become a
bottleneck.
Confluence itself is tested and optimised to handle high loads and avoids these kinds of problems. But if
you install a number of plugins that have not been tested against high load, your system may become
unstable.
We recommend that you load test the common use cases of each unofficial third-party plugin if your
Confluence installation is mission critical. Only activate plugins that are vital to your business, and
never allow experimental plugins onto your production system until they have been tested in a staging
environment.
You should select your JVM carefully and you may need to be able to tune it.
The selection of the JVM for your large Confluence instance can have a huge impact on the performance
perceived by the users. Between versions 1.4 and 6 of the Sun Java JVM there have been some
impressive improvements in performance, especially under high concurrent load.
• Always run the most recent point release of your selected JVM.
• Where ever possible run the most recent major release from your selected JVM manufacturer. The
Sun JVM version 6 is much faster than 1.4, especially under high loads.
• Tune your garbage collection algorithms. Experiment with different algorithms and settings to get
the response times you desire in your environment. Here are some specific guidelines for Sun JVM in
the Sun documentation:
° Java 6
You may need to customise Confluence for performance reasons. Depending on your usage scenario,
there may be ways to enhance Confluence performance that become necessary when you reach a certain
level of usage.
pages.
Please refer to our general Performance Tuning page for more details.
RELATED TOPICS
Performance Tuning
Configuring a Large Confluence Installation
Confluence Clustering Overview
Requesting Performance Support
Administrators Guide
Configuration Guide
Like any server application, Confluence may require some tuning as it is put under heavier use. We do
our best to make sure Confluence performs well under a wide variety of circumstances, but there's no
single configuration that is best for everyone's environment and usage patterns.
If you are having problems with the performance of Confluence and need our help resolving them, you
should read this document: Requesting Performance Support
Antivirus Software
Antivirus software greatly decreases the performance of Confluence. Antivirus software that intercepts
access to the hard disk is particularly detrimental, and may even cause errors with Confluence. You
should configure your antivirus software to ignore the Confluence home directory, its index directory and
any database-related directories.
Access logs
You can find out which pages are slow and which users are accessing them by enabling Confluence's
built-in access logging.
Built-in Profiler
You can identify the cause of page delays using Confluence's built-in profiler according to Troubleshooting
Slow Performance Using Page Request Profiling.
Choice of Database
The embedded database that is provided with Confluence is meant only to be used for evaluation, or
for low-volume Confluence sites. Once your site grows, you will almost certainly need to switch to an
external relational database management system. Beyond this, we do not recommend any particular
RDBMS over another. We recommend using what you are familiar with, because your ability to maintain
the database will probably make far more difference to what you get out of it than the choice of database
itself.
Database Indexes
If Confluence is running slowly, the most likely cause is that there is some kind of bottleneck in the
database.
If you have the luxury of access to a DBA, it would be worthwhile having them tune the database
specifically to the demands that your particular Confluence installation is placing on it. If you do not
have a DBA, you may want to consult the database indexing advice that we have been gathering from
customer reports and our own experience running and developing Confluence. The instructions on that
page are for Oracle, but most of the indexes can be applied to (and will help with) any database.
(These database indexes are now created automatically when Confluence is installed, but existing
installations upgrading to a more recent version may still need to add them manually)
There is also a Cache Statistics page provided with Confluence. This page shows the size of each cache
and its hit ratio.
Important Caches
The following are more specific performance problems that can be resolved from tuning the cache.
If you're installation of Confluence is suffering from this problem, it may be due to a insufficient
SpacePermissions cache size. To address this problem, first determine the number of space permission
objects in your Confluence instance. You can do this by running this query against your database:
Now locate the cache entry for SpacePermissions in your ehcache.xml file. It looks like this:
<local-scheme>
<scheme-
name>cache:com.atlassian.confluence.security.CachingSpacePermissionManager.permissions</scheme-
name>
<scheme-ref>default</scheme-ref>
<high-units>10000</high-units>
<expiry-delay>0s</expiry-delay>
</local-scheme>
Note: 10K of space permissions consumes approximately 8MB of memory. Please ensure there is enough
memory allocated to your instance to cater for this.
<local-scheme>
<scheme-name>cache:com.atlassian.confluence.core.ContentEntityObject.bodyContents</scheme-
name>
<high-units>2000</high-units>
<scheme-ref>default</scheme-ref>
<expiry-delay>0s</expiry-delay>
</local-scheme>
You can find more information about configuring the Coherence cache in the Coherence cache
documentation.
When configuring your new web server, make sure you configure sufficient threads/processes to handle
the load. This applies to both the web server and the application server connector, which are typically
configured separately. If possible, you should enable connection pooling in your web server connections
to the application server.
RELATED TOPICS
Deploying any application to several thousand users requires care and planning, expecially if those users
are going to be relying on the application to get their work done.
General Advice
Staged Rollout
Do not try to deploy Confluence immediately to your whole organisation. Instead, roll it out department
by department, or project by project.
How Confluence will scale given a particular software and hardware configuration depends very much on
how Confluence is likely to be used in your organisation. Launching Confluence to everybody at once may
seem like a neat idea, but it also means that any problems you might experience scaling the system up to
your entire organisation will hit you all at once, annoy everyone and possibly hurt adoption.
Rolling Confluence out gradually will give you the chance to tune it as you go, resulting in a much more
painless experience. There will also be organisational advantages: you can identify those teams or
projects who are most likely to be successful 'early adopters', and those teams can experiment with how
best a wiki might suit your organisation, and pass on their 'best wiki practices' as usage of Confluence
expands.
The Java virtual machine is configured with a "maximum heap size" that limits the amount of memory it
will consume. If Confluence fills up this maximum heap size it will run out of memory, and start behaving
unpredictably. You can keep track of Confluence's memory usage from the System Information screen of
the administration console:
This example shows that, at the time of writing, confluence.atlassian.com is using 173MB of an allocated
313MB of heap. (The JVM was configured with a maximum heap size of 450MB, but this information is not
available in the graph. The 313MB figure shows that the full 450MB of heap has not yet been needed)
Confluence will need a database connection for each simultaneous user connection to the server. It is
also a good idea to have 5-10 connections spare for Confluence internal processes such as backups, re-
indexing or daily notification jobs.
Running out of pooled connections will cause the server to slow down as more users are waiting for a
connection to be freed before starting their own request, and will eventually cause visible system errors
as Confluence times out waiting for a database connection.
Cache Sizes
The Performance Tuning page includes some useful rules of thumb for configuring the sizes of
Confluence's internal caches.
RELATED TOPICS
One of our current tasks is improving Confluence's performance, in time and space. This page lists some
of the things we've done to speed up Confluence, and to reduce its memory footprint.
I've spent the last few days looking at Confluence's memory footprint.
The biggest win so far (besides turning off all the caches ) has been in Spring. Confluence uses
dependency injection everywhere, both for its services and to initialise short lived objects like xwork
actions. It seems that Spring doesn't directly cater for the latter use, and is very easy to misuse if you
aren't careful.
Spring keeps track of dependencies between the beans it manages, so if you inject bean A into bean B,
Spring will record the fact. Spring will call B.setA(A) of course, to perform the injection. Then it adds the
name of B to the list of beans which depend on A, so that during shutdown it can remove B before A.
Spring does allow non-singleton beans, and it understands that they shouldn't be registered as
dependents, but DefaultListableBeanFactory doesn't provide a way of autowiring a non-singleton bean.
Confluence's calisthenics and orthodontia is under way. Soon we'll be running light without overbyte!
Confluence uses (mostly) regular expressions to convert wiki style markup into html. These are simple to
write, fairly simple to compose (that is, you can add another regular expression which gets applied on top
of the ones you already have), and most importantly, are forgiving.
It wouldn't be too hard to write a grammar expressing the markup language, but when a user enters
markup which the system doesn't understand, you need to fail softly – not throwing away any input, and
not presenting the user with an error message. The mechanics of the markup process must be invisible to
the user.
Regular expressions can be expensive to apply – for instance, when viewing a 100
line page in Confluence 1.4, 17% of the CPU time used during the request is used in
java.util.regex.Matcher.replaceAll().
"(^|\\s)---(\\s|$)"
which finds
---
—
which renders as — .
It's simple to see when this regular expression certainly doesn't apply to some wiki text – when that text
doesn't include
---
You can do an analagous test for each of our many regular expressions, just look for a constant part of
the regex. Of course, the existence of the constant part is a necessary, not a sufficient condition to know
that the regex will match, but it works well enough to be worthwhile.
A simple
wikiText.indexOf(constantPart) > 0
check before each application of a regular expression reduces that 17% to 9%, on a page of 100 lines
which has bold and italic markup on every other line.
It's interesting that replaceAll() doesn't try that itself. Presumably its optimised for the case when the
string you give it does match the expression, which is probably the most common situation.
A very simple but worthwhile saving. The only situation we need to worry about is if many of the lines in
our pages have many types of markup on them, because then we not only pay for the replaceAll(), but
also pay for the indexOf.
Key information about performance tuning and how Adapatavist runs many instances of Confluence. This
was posted to the mailing list but not captured in the forums so I wanted to copy it here:
Hi,
> 1) Opterons – for better or worse, we're solely an Intel shop at this point (i.e. I'll get some resistance
going down the AMD path). It seems like the latest Woodcrest Xeons have caught up with the Opterons
performance-wise (although AMD was smacking around Intel for a while before that). Have you the
Woodcrest Xeons at all? (I'm guessing at this point you're probably just interested in pursuing an Opteron
path but figured I'd ask.)
We found the Opterons are perfect for running multithreaded apps - especially when running lots of
Confluence / JIRA installs on a server in their own Resin containers. In addition, the Opterons use a
less electrical power than their Intel counterparts which reduces our energy bills - for that reason we've
not tried the Woodcrest chip yet. The chassis used for Opteron chips is also more established than the
Woodcrest counterpart and is thus cheaper at the moment and has more options. Any dual-core will likely
give better results, but you'll obviously need your OS and other software on the server to be set-up to
take advantage of them.
> 2) Resin vs. Tomcat – would you mind guessing at performance numbers from what you've seen? In a
ton of Googling, it seems like people are saying that Tomcat was slow back with 4.x but got much faster
with 5.x and even more with 5.5.x. See the comments in the first link.
Resin, properly configured, is still faster In addition, it uses a lot less RAM (important when you have
50 web apps in their own containers). We spent a lot of time super-fine-tuning Resin (about 4 months if
memory serves - huge thanks to Caucho and the chaps at BeJUG) to run Confluence very nicely indeed.
I can't vouch for it's speed with regards to other apps. We've found Resin to be highly stable (when
correctly configured) and it deals very well with that elusive Confluence memory leak (something you
notice on a site like JavaPolis1 with over 17,600 registered users). It's garbage collection, again when
properly tuned, was better than Tomcat and we found many tasks easier to automate with Resin as
compared to Tomcat.
Admittedly, a lot of the reasons that we chose Resin for are geared to an environment where we're
running up to 50 Confluences on a single server, each in their own web app. That's quite a different
scenario to what you are doing where you maybe have one or two Confluences on a server. Although,
having said that, we use the same set-up for our dedicated hosting (we're hosting some real BIG
Confluence installs as you'll know if you followed the discussion about the import routine we've been
working on) and it works great in that environment too.
We use the commercial version of Resin2 - it's much better than the OS version as it has fewer bugs,
runs more smoothly and has some real nice features (read: absolutely critically essential for the sanity of
our staff thus reducing our monthly bills for padded cells and therapy) for the type of environment we use
it in. We also really liked Caucho's licensing of resin3: $500 per physical server with 2 cores (additional
cores @ $500/core which is very reasonable) regardless of the number of Resin containers on that server.
It should be noted that some of the stats you provided links to were done on Windows running Cygwin
- hardly an ideal server environment The second link (with all the graphs that people like me
understand) was far more representative. We run on SuSE Linux 10 EMT64 (or something like that -
whatever the latest version of their 64-bit OS is) so there's no Windows bloat getting in the way of the
web apps, etc.
> 3) Memory. I think I'll go for DDR667 and see if I can bump Confluence up to 2 GB. Is there ever a
point where you can allocate too much RAM? (i.e. java and/or Confluence just don't handle tracking that
many cached objects well)
I think we're up to 16GB in most of our servers now. Confluence does enjoy more RAM (although
containers such as Resin bring the overall RAM consumption down a fair bit - very noticeable on servers
with 50 containers/apps). More RAM means more space to cache and longer gaps between forced GC.
RAM allocation is also vital when it comes to the nightly backup (or "the dreadded backup hour" as we
refer to it) - you can imagine the CPU and RAM spikes caused by 50 large Confluence installations all
deciding to backup at the same time (roll on Confluence 2.3!)...
Should you have too much memory, you can always run a Quake server on there :o)
Best Regards,
Guy
1 http://www.javapolis.com - at last year's conference the Belgian's were somewhat annoyed at the
term "SOA" which is an obscenity over there. They were also less than happy about the spoons in sexual
positions plastered all over Antwerp (and several thousand Javapolians wearing the conference t-shirts).
So this year Stephan and the crew have decided to push the boundaries to hitherto unimaginable levels -
anyone who's seen the promo video will know exactly what I mean (and no, not the white painted bloke
next to the urinal - the video goes waaaay beyond that - how they got James Gosling to... well, you'll
have to wait and see)
2 http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.0/features/overview.xtp
3 http://www.caucho.com/sales/sales.xtp
Dan will probably be along in the morning to correct any mistakes I've made
-
Managing Confluence's performance and memory usage really depends on what resources are available
- Confluence will run faster if you give it lots of memory for its caches, but it should still be able to run
quite well in low-memory environments, with the right tuning. Below are some tips on getting the most
out of your Confluence site:
See Increasing JIRA memory for details on how to increase the memory available to web application
servers typically used to run Confluence.
Embedded Database
The embedded HSQL database that comes with Confluence essentially holds all your data in memory
while the Confluence server is running. If you are running out of memory, you should consider migrating
Confluence to some external RDBMS.
Caching
By default, Confluence keeps large in-memory caches of data to improve its responsiveness and the user
experience. The trade off is an increase in memory requirements to support the cache. The default size of
these caches will be reduced significantly in Confluence 1.5 (although this means that administrators of
larger Confluence sites may need to configure the size of their caches to improve performance).
Confluence keeps a copy of all emails that it failed to send within an internal error queue. In the event of
intermittent failures such as network connectivity issues, the emails in this queue can be manually resent
when the problem is fixed. Under certain circumstances, the mail queue can fill up with large objects.
Since Confluence 1.4.1 the queue is regularly flushed, but if you get a lot of mail errors, you might get a
spike in memory usage.
Attachments
The indexing of large attachments requires that the attachment be loaded into memory. In the case
of large attachments, this can cause a temporary strain on the systems resources, and may result in
indexing failing because the attachment could not be fully loaded into memory.
The Confluence backup and resort process scales linearly with the size of data. This can have a significant
impact on large Confluence instances where the amount of data exceeds the amount of available
memory. If you are experiencing OutOfMemoryErrors during either a backup or restore, you with either
need to move to per space backups or increase the memory allocated to Confluence. This is addressed in
the upcoming Confluence 2.0.
If you are attempting to restore a backup and encountering the OutOfMemoryError, how much memory
will you need to make it work? A good rule of thumb is to have a look at the size of the entities.xml file in
your backup. This file contains all of the data Confluence will be loading, so at least that much is required.
Add another 64-128Mb to ensure that Confluence has enough memory to load and function and that
should be enough.
This problem has been resolved in Confluence post 1.4.x. To increase the amount of memory available to
confluecne, see allocating more memory to tomcat.
There are also some memory issues we don't have any control over. For example,
If you're having problems that appear to be a memory leak, file an issue on http://support.atlassian.com.
Our memory profiler of choice is YourKit, so if you can get a memory dump from that tool showing a leak
A common cause of random pauses in Confluence is the jvm running garbage collection. To determine if
this is what is happening, enable verbose garbage collection and look at how long java is taking to free
up memory. If the random pauses match when java is running its garbage collection, garbage collection is
the cause of the pause.
Verbose garbage collection will generate log statements that indicate when java is collecting garbage,
how long it takes, and how much memory has been freed.
or in bin/setenv.sh, set:
If you modify bin/setenv.sh, you will need to restart Confluence for the changes to take effect.
What can you do to minimise the time taken to handle the garbage collection? See http://java.sun.com/
docs/hotspot/gc1.4.2/ for details on tuning the jvm to minimize the impact that garbage collection has on
the running application.
Problem
For large backup zip files (bigger than 1GB) OutOfMemoryErrors can occur during restore, even though
the maximum heap size is way above this value.
Cause:
javax.servlet.ServletException: Servlet execution threw an exception
at
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:275)
caused by: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError
at java.util.zip.ZipFile.open(Native Method)
However, when looking at the system information you will find that there is still a lot of memory available
on the heap.
Memory Information:
Total Memory: 2480 MB
Free Memory: 2385 MB
Used Memory: 95 MB
Solution
The problem seems to be a bug in Java. The method java.util.zip.ZipFile.open does not actually use the
allocated memory of the heap, it maps the entire zip file into virtual memory outside the heap. If you run
into this problem, you should try to reduce your heap size to about 600MB and try the restore again. This
seems to accord with the experience of other developers:
Related topics
If you are having performance issues with Confluence, and the advice on Performance Tuning has not
helped, you can always ask us for help. Performance issues can be hard to diagnose, however, and we
often spend a lot of time going back and forth looking for more information about what may be causing
Confluence to be slow for you. The best way to get a speedy resolution to your issue is to provide this
information up front.
Please gather all of the information listed below and include it in your support request, even if you think
you have a good idea what's causing the problem. That way we don't have to ask for it later.
System Information
Confluence Server
• Take a screenshot of Confluence's Administration # System Information (or save the page as
HTML)
• Take a screenshot of Confluence's Administration # Cache Statistics (or save the page as
HTML)
• Find out the exact hardware Confluence is running on
° How many CPUs? What make and model? What MHz?
° How much memory is installed on the machine?
° How much memory is assigned to Confluence's JVM? (i.e. what are the -Xmx and -Xms
Confluence Content
The Database
User Management
• Are you using external user management or authentication? (i.e. JIRA or LDAP user delegation, or
single sign-on)
• If you are using external JIRA user management, what is the latency between Confluence and JIRA's
database server?
• If you are using LDAP user management:
° What version of which LDAP server are you using?
° What is the latency between Confluence and the LDAP server?
Diagnostics
Observed Problems
Monitoring data
Before drilling down into individual problems, helps a lot to understand the nature of the performance
problem. Do we deal with sudden spikes of load, or is it a slowly growing load, or maybe a load that
follows a certain pattern (daily, weekly, maybe even monthly) that only on certain occasions exceeds
critical thresholds? It helps a lot to have access to continuous monitoring data available to get a rough
overview.
Load
This graph shows the load for two consecutive days. The obvious pattern is that the machine is under
decent load, which corresponds to the user activity, and there is no major problem.
The bottom line being: it helps a lot to monitor your Confluence systems continuously (we use Hyperic,
for example), and it helps even more if you are able to send us graphs when you encounter problems.
Access logs
• Enable user access logging, including redirecting the logs to a separate file
° You can run this file through a log file analyser such as AWStats, or manually look through for
• Enable Confluence's built-in profiling for long enough to demonstrate the performance problem using
Troubleshooting Slow Performance Using Page Request Profiling.
° If a single page is reliably slow, you should make several requests to that page
° If the performance problem is intermittent, or is just a general slowness, leave profiling
enabled for thirty minutes to an hour to get a good sample of profiling times
• Find Confluence's standard output logs (which will include the profiling data above). Take a zip of
the entire logs directory.
• Take a thread dump during times of poor performance
CPU Load
• If you are experiencing high CPU load, please install the YourKit profile and attach two profiler
dumps taken during a CPU spike. If the CPU spikes are long enough, please take the profiles 30-60
seconds apart.
• It is essential to understand the user access and usage of your instance. Please use the access log
scripts and sql scripts to generate Usage statistics for your instance.
Next Step
Open a ticket on https://support.atlassian.com and attach all the data you have collected. This should
give us the information we need to track down the source of your performance problems and suggest a
solution. Please follow the progress of your enquiry on the support ticket you have created.
If your site is non-responsive, please use our Live Support during business hours once you have created
the ticket to escalate your problem.
The access log scripts are attached to this page. To use the scripts:
Note
All scripts are written in Ruby and assume the log file name contains the string
'confluence.atlassian.com-access.log'. Scripts need to be changed if another name is used. Modify
the line: filenameRegexp = Regexp.new('confluence.atlassian.com-access.log')
What is the typical number of concurrent active users i.e. number of concurrent requests being
processed?
– light viewer
– rss reader
– searcher
– infrequent editor
– frequent editor
– administrator
– commenter
Usage
What is the average number of pages created per day, and similar usage stats (AWStat reports are a
good starting place when User Access Logging is enabled)
To help interpret the raw access data, consider these important URL patterns:
Searches: http://<host>/dosearchsite.action
Rss requests: http://<host>/createrssfeed.action
Dashboard: dashboard.action
Creation: createpage.action
Editing: http://<host>/pages/editpage.action
Administrators: http://<host>/admin/*
The following SQL statements are for PostgreSQL database. You may need to adjust the queries to
suit your database.
• Example result:
• Example result:
contenttype min max avg
BLOGPOST 1 718 14.4705882352941176
COMMENT 1 73 23.5120000000000000
DRAFT 4 6 5.0000000000000000
MAIL 1 1 1.00000000000000000000
PAGE 1 4658 130.2650602409638554
SPACEDESCRIPTION 1 4 1.2033898305084746
USERINFO 1 48 16.7991967871485944
• Example result:
contenttype count
MAIL 7914
COMMENT 12983
SPACEDESCRIPTION 232
DRAFT 10
PAGE 81465
USERINFO 13782
BLOGPOST 3308
• Example result:
http max min avg stddev_popstddev_samp var_pop var_samp
false 1994 1 5.8366957470010905
32.7082672608353032
32.7104967872521825
1069.8307472062305489
1069.9766000688353519
true 189 1 2.9633190883190883
6.3609167066017375
6.3614831031752836
40.4612613483250948
40.4684672719846362
• Example result:
max min avg stddev variance
488707 1 2826.5649320388349515
8858.74099669923878477292.046599816739
• Example result:
max min avg stddev variance
488707 1 3333.0885906386048069
9884.33716292018097700121.150284961908
Attachments
• Example result:
count max min avg stddev sum
16082 107431588 0 207641.309725158562
2447904.9322 3339287543
List the stats for attachments per page, only for those pages that actually have attachments.
• Example result:
pages_with_attachments avg max min stddev
4197 3.8317846080533715
231 1 10.7013051235493489
• Example result:
• Example result:
count sum
665 153094
Content
It is essential to obtain the typical configuration of database (#pages, #spaces, #registered users, etc),
based on Global Stats Plugin
This page tells you how to enable page-request profiling. With profiling turned on, you will see a record of
the time it takes (in milliseconds) to complete each action made on any Confluence page. If Confluence is
responding slowly, an internal timing trace of the slow page request can help to identify the cause of the
delay.
In this page:
There are two ways to turn on profiling for your Confluence instance:
http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action
then you must manually add ?profile=on to the end of the URL:
http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action?profile=on
• To turn profiling off: In your browser address bar, change the URL by appending ?profile=off
to the end of the URL for static pages, or &profile=off if the URL is dynamic and already has
parameters.
For example, if your Dashboard link is:
http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action
then you must manually add ?profile=off to the end of the URL:
http://localhost:8080/dashboard.action?profile=off
3. Press Enter.
From Confluence 2.7, you can use the 'Logging and Profiling' option to enable or disable profiling.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Logging and Profiling' in the 'Administration' section of
the left-hand panel.
2. The 'Logging and Profiling' screen appears. Click the 'Enable Profiling' button.
If profiling is already enabled, the button will be labelled 'Disable Profiling' instead.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Logging and Profiling' in the 'Administration' section of
the left-hand panel.
2. The 'Logging and Profiling' screen appears. Click the 'Disable Profiling' button.
If profiling is already disabled, the button will be labelled 'Enable Profiling' instead.
Example of a Profile
Below are the first few lines of a normal profile for accessing a page called Confluence Overview.
[344ms] - /display/ds/Confluence+Overview
[313ms] - SiteMesh: parsePage: http://localhost:8080/display/ds/Confluence+Overview
[313ms] - XW Interceptor: Before defaultStack: /pages/viewpage.action
(ViewPageAction.execute())
[0ms] - SpaceAwareInterceptor.intercept()
[16ms] - PageAwareInterceptor.intercept()
[0ms] - AOP: PageManager.getPage()
[16ms] - AOP: PermissionManager.hasPermission()
[0ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
[16ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
[0ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
[0ms] - AOP: SpacePermissionManager.hasPermission()
[281ms] - XW Interceptor: After defaultStack: /pages/viewpage.action
(ViewPageAction.execute())
[281ms] - XW Interceptor: After validatingStack: /pages/viewpage.action
(ViewPageAction.execute())
...
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence supports HTTP GZip transfer encoding. This means that if a user's web browser supports
it, Confluence will compress the data it sends to the user. This will speed up Confluence over slow or
congested Internet links, and reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed by a Confluence server.
• Users are accessing Confluence over the Internet, or a WAN connection with limited bandwidth.
• You wish to reduce the amount of data transfer between the Confluence server and client.
If you are accessing Confluence over a Local Area Network or over a particularly fast WAN, you may wish
to leave GZip encoding disabled. If the network is fast enough that transferring data from Confluence to
the user isn't a limiting factor, the additional CPU load caused by having to compress each HTTP response
may in fact slow Confluence down.
In Confluence 2.8 and later, you can configure which types of content are compressed within Confluence.
By default, the following mime types will be compressed:
• text/htmltext
• javascript
• text/css
• text/plain
• application/x-javascript
• application/javascript
If you wish to change the types of content to be compressed, add a replacement urlrewrite-gzip-
default.xml file within the WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/gzipfilter/ directory in your Confluence
Installation Directory. A sample file is provided as an attachment. Generally speaking, it is unlikely that
you will need to alter this file.
RELATED TOPICS
Performance Tuning
Administrators Guide
There is a plugin for Confluence 2.2 and later which allows easy profiling using the YourKit profiler. No
license is required to generate a memory or CPU snapshot, but you will need at least an evaluation
license to analyse the results.
JIRA also has a plugin to profile JIRA's CPU and memory usage with YourKit.
On this page:
Download YourKit 6.0 for your platform and follow the installation instructions to install it.
Note: YourKit version 7 is not compatible with the Confluence yourkit plugin.
The following instructions apply to Confluence Standalone and Tomcat installations with Sun JDK
1.5. They should be easily applicable to other application servers and JVMs, however. The YourKit
documentation covers this in more detail.
Windows Configuration
On Windows, add to your PATH environment variable the bin/win32/ directory underneath the YourKit
installation directory. For example, you might add "C:\Program Files\YourKit Java Profiler 6.0.12\bin
\win32" to your PATH, via Control Panel, System, Advanced, Environment Variables.
To configure Confluence's JVM to use the YourKit agent, you need to add a parameter to JAVA_OPTS in
the bin/setenv.bat file in your Confluence application directory. This file controls the startup parameters
for Tomcat, so you'll need to restart it after making the changes.
Linux/Mac OS X Configuration
On Unix-based systems, include the installation directory in the library path environment variable, as
shown below:
In general, to configure a Sun 1.5 JDK, you add the agentlib parameter:
Performance Impact
To minimize performance problems use the following modifications to the agentlib parameter:
-agentlib:yjpagent=disablecounts,disablealloc,disablej2ee
See also Profiling overhead: how to reduce or avoid in the YourKit documentation.
Download the plugin and upload it into Confluence through the Administration, Plugins page.
A new menu option will appear under the 'Administration' heading. Click it and you should see the options
to take a memory or CPU snapshot.
This profiler dump will be saved to a local temp directory, and the path shown once it is complete. For the
CPU snapshot, this will take at least 30 seconds. For the memory snapshot, 10-15 seconds.
Analysing a profiler dump enables Atlassian Support (or you, if you are interested) to see exactly what is
happening in your application: what classes are using the memory, what is using CPU and so on. This can
help us debug tricky performance problems which would otherwise be impossible to analyse remotely.
If you run into situations where Confluence is unresponsive and you are not able to trigger a memory
snapshot, please ensure that you start Confluence with the onexit=memory parameter in the JVM options
(as in the example below) and simply shut down Confluence. Before shutting down a memory snapshot
will be created.
-agentlib:yjpagent=onexit=memory
The source code for this Confluence plugin is available from Subversion and browseable in Fisheye. The
JAR produced by 'mvn package' includes a copy of the YJP redistributable bundled in META-INF/lib/.
Confluence has a small number of obscure configuration and debugging settings that can be enabled
through Java system properties. System properties are usually set by passing the -D flag to the Java
virtual machine in which Confluence is running.
This page provides a quick overview of the jobs that are scheduled to run regularly in your Confluence
instance.
Technical Reasons
Confluence indexes pages using a customised Lucene search engine that returns matching pages, mail
and blog posts for which the searcher has view permission. It would require significant source code
modifications to enable Confluence to process search results from external pages, as the indexing process
has been customised to utilise internal Confluence metadata. Note that users can still index content from
new attachment filetypes.
If you only have a small number of external sites to index, you may prefer to enable the HTML-include
Macro and use it embed the external content inside normal Confluence pages.
Use your own programmer resources to replace Confluence's internal search with a crawler that indexes
both Confluence and external sites. This advanced option is easier than modifying the internal search
engine. It requires removing Confluence internal search from all pages and replacing the internal results
page with your own crawler front-end.
1. Setup a replacement federated search engine to index the Confluence site, as well as your other
sites, and provide the results that way. You would need to host a web crawler, such as these open-
source crawlers. Note that you can perform a search in Confluence via the remote API
2. Replace references to the internal search by modifying the site layout so that it links to your search
front-end
3. Host another site containing the search front-end. You may wish to insert it into a suitable context
path in your application server so that it appears to be from a path under Confluence. Tomcat sets
Confluence's paths from the Confluence install\confluence\WEBINF\web.xml file.
Related Information
Any web crawler can be configured to index Confluence content, for example the Google Search Appliance
or similar. If a login is required to view content that will be indexed, you should create a Confluence user
specifically for the search crawler to use. Grant this user view rights to all content you wish to index, but
deny that user all delete and administration rights. This ensures that an aggressive crawler will not be
able to perform actions that could modify the site.
Related Information
This document describes how to configure Confluence to use a HTTPS encrypted secure socket layer for
user logins and page data.
Unencrypted confidential data within Confluence may be intercepted by an attacker. To secure user logins,
you can enable access via HTTPS (HTTP over SSL), and require its use for pages where passwords are
sent. In some cases where issue data is sensitive, all pages can be set to be accessed over HTTPS.
Enabling SSL access is different for each application server, but specifying which pages to require
protection for is generic. This document is specific to Tomcat, the default application server shipped with
Confluence.
Some questions will be asked, including a password for the certificate (the default is 'changeit'). Please
note down what you choose, as it will be used in the next step.
In the confluence directory, open the conf/server.xml file and insert one of the following just after the
closing </Engine> tag:
Or for users of Confluence 2.1.x or earlier, add or uncomment the following lines:
2. Change <MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD> to the password you entered for the certificate when you
generated it.
If you just created your new Certificate or your existing one is in the default location, skip to the
'Testing SSL' section. By default, Tomcat will look for the certificates in C:\Documents and Settings
\\#CURRENT_USER#\.keystore on Windows or ~/.keystore on Unix. If your Certificate is not in this
location, you will need to update your <INSTALL>/conf/server.xml file as outlined below, so that
Tomcat can find it. Advanced users who require an official CA-issued key pair for their Certificate can find
instructions in the Tomcat documentation.
Or for users of Confluence 2.1.x or earlier, change the <Factory> tag to following:
<Factory className="org.apache.coyote.tomcat4.CoyoteServerSocketFactory"
clientAuth="false" protocol="TLS" keystoreFile="<MY_CERTIFICATE_LOCATION>"
keystorePass="<MY_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD>" />
Testing SSL
For more detailed information on setting up SSL with Tomcat (including additional configuration options),
have a look at Tomcat 4 SSL Howto or Tomcat 5.5 SSL Howto.
Although HTTPS is now activated and available, the old HTTP URLs (http://localhost:8080) are still
available. In most situations one wants these URLs to continue working, but for some to redirect to their
HTTPS equivalent.
If you have changed the port that the SSL connector is running on from the preconfigured value of
8443, you must update the redirectPort attribute of the standard HTTP connector to reflect the
new SSL port. Tomcat needs this information to know which port to redirect to when an incoming
request needs to be secure.
To configure which URLs you want secured, edit the confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml file and add the
following declaraiont to the end, before the </web-app> tag:
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>Login and Restricted Space URLs</web-resource-name>
<url-pattern>/login.action</url-pattern>
</web-resource-collection>
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>
Note that the example above specifies a url-pattern for the login URL /login.action. This means
that whenever a user tries to access the unprotected version of the login page, they will be redirected
automatically to the secured version of it.
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>Login and Restricted Space URLs</web-resource-name>
<url-pattern>/login.action</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>/display/SALARIES/*</url-pattern>
</web-resource-collection>
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>
This will redirect all URLs for page views in the SALARIES space. This does not however, protect pages
that are accessed via a URL like /pages/viewpage.action?pageId=123. Confluence generates these
types of URLs for pages that have non-ASCII characters in the title. Hence this is not a complete solution.
<security-constraint>
<web-resource-collection>
<web-resource-name>Restricted URLs</web-resource-name>
<url-pattern>*.action</url-pattern>
</web-resource-collection>
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
</security-constraint>
Once this change is made, restart Confluence and access http://localhost:8080. You should be redirected
to https://localhost:8443/login.action.
There does not seem to be an easy way to make subsequent pages revert to HTTP after logging in
via HTTPS - see JRA-7250
You are required to configure a Realm, even though the security-constraint above does not access it. Add
this realm tag inside the Engine tag:
<Engine ...
<Realm className="org.apache.catalina.realm.MemoryRealm" />
...
</Engine>
You can protect other paths as necessary, but be aware that if attachments are protected, they will
not be downloadable from Internet Explorer (see this issue).
Sites may wish to disable anonymous access to the remote API to make it harder for malicious users
to write 'bots' that perform bulk changes to the site. If you wish to enable the Remote APIs but do not
want anonymous users to access Confluence remotely, you can disable anonymous access from the
Administration Console.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit' at the bottom of the 'Options and Settings' screen.
3. Select 'Off' beside 'Anonymous Access to API'.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
If you want to restrict your site to a particular set of users, you may want to disable 'Public Signup'. In
this instance, administrators can add new users from the Administration Console.
1. From the 'Administration Console' click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. This will display the 'General Configuration' screen. Click 'Edit'.
3. Beside 'Public Signup', select 'On' to enable Public Signup. Select 'Off' to disable it.
4. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page Security
Anonymous Access to Remote API
Hiding external links from search engines helps to discourage spammers from posting links on your site.
If you turn this option on, any URLs inserted in pages and comments will be given the 'nofollow' attribute,
which prevents search engines from following them.
Shortcut links and links to other pages within Confluence are not affected.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left panel.
2. This will display the 'General Configuration' screen. Click 'Edit'.
3. Select 'On' beside 'Hide External Links From Search Engines'.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
The People Directory provides a list of all users in your Confluence system.
If you need to disable the People Directory set the following system properties on your application server
command line:
-Dconfluence.disable.peopledirectory.anonymous=true
-Dconfluence.disable.peopledirectory.all=true
Note that the 'People Directory' link will still appear on the dashboard, so you will need to modify
the following file to remove the link: /decorators/global.vmd (In Confluence Standalone, this is
located in the confluence directory)
By default, external referrers for a page are listed under 'Incoming Links' under the 'Info' tab of the page.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page Security (Confluence 2.8)
Anonymous Access to Remote API (Confluence 2.8)
Enabling or Disabling Public Signup (Confluence 2.8)
Excluding external referrers (Confluence 2.8)
Hiding External Links From Search Engines (Confluence 2.8)
Excluding external referrers prevents them from being displayed anywhere on your site.
In a site that is open to public, one unfortunate problem is that malicious sites can spam the display of
a page's incoming links statistics. This is usually done to get the site's URL to appear in the sidebar. By
adding these sites to the 'excluded referrers' list, you can prevent them from being listed on your site.
Confluence will consider any URL originating from the domain name where Confluence is installed as an
internal link. However, if Confluence is installed on a server with multiple domain names or IP addresses,
you will need to add the other domain name prefixes to this list to let Confluence know that any links
from these domains should not be considered external links.
You need to be a Confluence administrator and know the URL of the site to add it to the excluded
referrers list.
1. Go to the Administration Console and click 'Manage Referrers' in the left-hand panel.
2. Add the URL to the 'Excluded External Referrer Prefixes' section. You must include 'http://' at the
front of the URL.
You can add more than one URL by putting each URL on a new line.
Once saved, all incoming links from URLs that match the blocked list will no longer be recorded.
Referrer URLs are blocked if they start with any of the URLs in the exclusion list. So http://
evilspamsite.blogspot.com will also match http://evilspamsite.blogspot.com/nastypage.html
RELATED TOPICS
By default, Confluence lists all external referrers under the 'Info' tab of a page. You can configure
Confluence to hide referrers from this view.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Manage Referrers' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Off' beside 'External Referrers'
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence provides three options for email address privacy which can be configured by a Confluence
administrator from the Administration Console:
1. From the 'Administration Console' click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. This will display the 'General Configuration' screen. Click 'Edit'.
3. Select one of the options next to 'User email visibility': 'public', 'masked', or 'only visible to site
administrators'.
4. 'Save' your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
Captcha Configuration
If your Confluence site is open to the public you may find that automated spam is being added, in the
form of comments or new pages.
You can configure Confluence to deter automated spam by asking users to prove that they are human
before they are allowed to:
Captcha is the technical term for a test that can distinguish a human being from an automated agent
such as a web spider or robot. When Captcha is enabled, users are required to read some text from an
image (see the example on the right) and type the text into the form.
When Captcha is on, users will need to recognise a distorted picture of a word, and must type the word
into a text field. This is easy for humans to do, but very difficult for computers.
You can choose which users don't have to complete Captchas. You can exempt signed-in users (they will
have completed a Captcha when they signed up), or members of particular groups.
By default Captchas will not be shown to registered users. Only anonymous users will have to perform
the Captcha test when creating comments or editing pages.
If you don't trust all registered users, you can choose to disable Captchas for only a certain group/groups
of users.
You can also customise the Captcha image (see Advanced Configuration below).
1. Click the 'Administration' link in the top right corner of any Confluence screen.
2. Choose Spam Configuration' from the 'Configuration' menu on the left.
3. Turn on Captcha by clicking the 'ON' link.
4. If you want to disable Captcha for certain groups:
• Select 'No one' if you want everyone to see Captchas.
• Select 'Signed in users' if you want only anonymous users to see Captchas.
• If you want everyone to see Captchas except members of specific groups, select the 'Members
of the following groups' and enter the group names in the text box.
You can click the magnifying-glass icon to search for groups. Search for all or part of a group
name and click the 'Select Groups' button to add a single or multiple groups to the list.
• To remove a group from the list, delete the group name.
5. Click the 'Save' button.
The section of this file which configures Captchas looks like this:
You can replace the 'captchaEngine' class with any text-based engine from jcaptcha.
The Hibernate mapping files are the authoritative reference. These are the *.hbm.xml files which
have been bundled into the main Confluence .jar file in recent releases.
This document is known to be in a very bare form, but the priority was placed on making the information
available.
Authentication
Atlassian-user
This is the "new" authentication system, which is more flexible and extensible than OpenSymphony.
Table "groups"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-----------+------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
groupname | character varying(255) | not null
Indexes:
"groups_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
Table "users"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------+-----------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
name | character varying(255) | not null
password | character varying(255) |
email | character varying(255) |
created | timestamp without time zone |
fullname | character varying(255) |
Indexes:
"users_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
"users_name_key" UNIQUE, btree (name)
Table "local_members"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------+--------+-----------
userid | bigint | not null
groupid | bigint | not null
Indexes:
"local_members_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (groupid, userid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fk6b8fb445117d5fda" FOREIGN KEY (groupid) REFERENCES groups(id)
"fk6b8fb445ce2b3226" FOREIGN KEY (userid) REFERENCES users(id)
external_entities: Maps users and groups from LDAP (or any other external authentication system) to
IDs in Confluence DB
Table "external_entities"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
name | character varying(255) |
type | character varying(255) | not null
Indexes:
"external_entities_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
external_members: associates LDAP (or other external) users with local groups.
Table "external_members"
Column | Type | Modifiers
OpenSymphony
The "old" authentication system, which was the default prior to 2.7.
Table "os_group"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-----------+------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
groupname | character varying(255) | not null
Indexes:
"os_group_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
"os_group_groupname_key" UNIQUE, btree (groupname)
Table "os_user"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------+------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
username | character varying(255) | not null
passwd | character varying(255) |
Indexes:
"os_user_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
"os_user_username_key" UNIQUE, btree (username)
Table "os_user_group"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------+--------+-----------
group_id | bigint | not null
user_id | bigint | not null
Indexes:
"os_user_group_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (user_id, group_id)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fk932472461e2e76db" FOREIGN KEY (group_id) REFERENCES os_group(id)
"fk93247246f73aee0f" FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES os_user(id)
Content
The actual information that users are storing and sharing.
Table "attachmentdata"
Column | Type | Modifiers
------------------+---------+-----------
attachmentdataid | bigint | not null
attversion | integer | not null
data | bytea |
attachmentid | bigint |
Indexes:
"attachmentdata_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (attachmentdataid)
"attch_data_idx" btree (attachmentid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fk9dc3e34d34a4917e" FOREIGN KEY (attachmentid) REFERENCES attachments(attachmentid)
bodycontent: stores the actual content of Confluence pages. No versioning information or other
metadata is stored here, though; that's all in the content table.
Table "bodycontent"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------------+--------+-----------
bodycontentid | bigint | not null
body | text |
contentid | bigint |
Indexes:
"bodycontent_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (bodycontentid)
"body_content_idx" btree (contentid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fka898d4778dd41734" FOREIGN KEY (contentid) REFERENCES content(contentid)
content: a persistence table for the ContentEntityObject class of objects. The subclass is indicated by the
contenttype column.
Table "content"
Column | Type | Modifiers
------------------+-----------------------------+-----------
contentid | bigint | not null
contenttype | character varying(255) | not null
title | character varying(255) |
version | integer |
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
versioncomment | text |
prevver | bigint |
content_status | character varying(255) |
spaceid | bigint |
parentid | bigint |
messageid | character varying(255) |
draftpageid | character varying(255) |
draftspacekey | character varying(255) |
drafttype | character varying(255) |
draftpageversion | integer |
pageid | bigint |
parentcommentid | bigint |
username | character varying(255) |
Indexes:
Table "content_label"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
labelid | bigint | not null
contentid | bigint | not null
spacekey | character varying(255) |
owner | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"content_label_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
"cl_contentid_idx" btree (contentid)
"cl_labelid_idx" btree (labelid)
"cl_lastmoddate_idx" btree (lastmoddate)
"cl_spacekey_idx" btree (spacekey)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fkf0e7436e27072aef" FOREIGN KEY (labelid) REFERENCES label(labelid)
"fkf0e7436e8dd41734" FOREIGN KEY (contentid) REFERENCES content(contentid)
Table "label"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
labelid | bigint | not null
name | character varying(255) |
owner | character varying(255) |
namespace | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"label_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (labelid)
"l_name_idx" btree (name)
"l_namespace_idx" btree (namespace)
"l_owner_idx" btree ("owner")
Table "content_perm"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
cp_type | character varying(10) | not null
username | character varying(255) |
groupname | character varying(255) |
cps_id | bigint |
content_perm_set: one-to-many mapping for content items and their permissions, with added metadata.
Table "content_perm_set"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------------+-----------------------------+-----------
id | bigint | not null
cont_perm_type | character varying(10) | not null
content_id | bigint |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"content_perm_set_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (id)
"cps_content_idx" btree (content_id)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fkbf45a7992caf22c1" FOREIGN KEY (content_id) REFERENCES content(contentid)
Clustering
clustersafety: normally, this table only contains one row. The value of the safetynumber is what
Confluence uses to find out whether another instance is sharing its database without being part of the
cluster.
Table "clustersafety"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-----------------+---------+-----------
clustersafetyid | bigint | not null
safetynumber | integer |
Indexes:
"clustersafety_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (clustersafetyid)
System information
confversion used by the upgrade system to determine what to expect from the database, so as to
negotiate upgrades.
Table "confversion"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------------+-----------------------------+-----------
confversionid | bigint | not null
buildnumber | integer | not null
installdate | timestamp without time zone |
versiontag | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"confversion_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (confversionid)
"confversion_buildnumber_key" UNIQUE, btree (buildnumber)
Table "plugindata"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
Spaces
Table "spacegroups"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------------+-----------------------------+-----------
spacegroupid | bigint | not null
spacegroupname | character varying(255) |
spacegroupkey | character varying(255) | not null
licensekey | text |
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"spacegroups_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (spacegroupid)
"spacegroups_spacegroupkey_key" UNIQUE, btree (spacegroupkey)
Table "spacepermissions"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------------+-----------------------------+-----------
permid | bigint | not null
spaceid | bigint |
permtype | character varying(255) | not null
permgroupname | character varying(255) |
permusername | character varying(255) |
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"spacepermissions_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (permid)
"sp_permtype_idx" btree (permtype)
"sp_pgname_idx" btree (permgroupname)
"sp_puname_idx" btree (permusername)
"sp_spaceid_idx" btree (spaceid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fkd33f23beb2dc6081" FOREIGN KEY (spaceid) REFERENCES spaces(spaceid)
spaces: information about the spaces themselves: key, human-friendly name and numeric ID.
Table "spaces"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
spaceid | bigint | not null
spacename | character varying(255) |
spacekey | character varying(255) | not null
spacedescid | bigint |
homepage | bigint |
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
spacetype | character varying(255) |
spacegroupid | bigint |
Appearance
decorator: storage of custom display templates, for customising layouts.
Table "decorator"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------------+-----------------------------+-----------
decoratorid | bigint | not null
spacekey | character varying(255) |
decoratorname | character varying(255) |
body | text |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"decorator_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (decoratorid)
"dec_key_idx" btree (spacekey)
"dec_name_idx" btree (decoratorname)
Miscellaneous
os_propertyentry: for arbitrary association of entities and properties.
Table "os_propertyentry"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-------------+-----------------------------+-----------
entity_name | character varying(125) | not null
entity_id | bigint | not null
entity_key | character varying(200) | not null
key_type | integer |
boolean_val | boolean |
double_val | double precision |
string_val | character varying(255) |
text_val | text |
long_val | bigint |
int_val | integer |
date_val | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"os_propertyentry_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (entity_name, entity_id, entity_key)
bandana: a catch-all persistence layer. It contains things like user settings and space- and global-level
configuration data, and is used as storage by plugins such as the Dynamic Task List plugin. Essentially, for
storing arbitrary data that doesn't fit anywhere else.
Table "bandana"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------------+------------------------+-----------
bandanaid | bigint | not null
bandanacontext | character varying(255) |
bandanakey | character varying(100) |
bandanavalue | text |
Indexes:
"bandana_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (bandanaid)
"band_context_idx" btree (bandanacontext)
"band_key_idx" btree (bandanakey)
Table "extrnlnks"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
linkid | bigint | not null
contenttype | character varying(255) | not null
viewcount | integer | not null
url | character varying(255) | not null
contentid | bigint | not null
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"extrnlnks_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (linkid)
"el_contentid_idx" btree (contentid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fk97c10fe78dd41734" FOREIGN KEY (contentid) REFERENCES content(contentid)
hibernate_unique_key: used by the high/low ID generator - the subsystem which generates our primary
keys.
Mess with this at the cost of being able to create objects.
Table "hibernate_unique_key"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------+---------+-----------
next_hi | integer |
Table "indexqueueentries"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
entryid | bigint | not null
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
type | integer |
handle | character varying(255) |
Indexes:
"indexqueueentries_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (entryid)
keystore: used by the trusted apps framework to store the server's private key, and other servers' public
keys.
Table "keystore"
Column | Type | Modifiers
-----------+------------------------+-----------
keyid | bigint | not null
alias | character varying(255) | not null
type | character varying(32) | not null
algorithm | character varying(32) | not null
keyspec | text | not null
Indexes:
"keystore_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (keyid)
links: tracks links within the server (i.e. across and within spaces).
Table "links"
Column | Type | Modifiers
---------------+-----------------------------+-----------
linkid | bigint | not null
destpagetitle | character varying(255) |
destspacekey | character varying(255) | not null
contentid | bigint | not null
creator | character varying(255) |
Table "notifications"
Column | Type | Modifiers
----------------+-----------------------------+-----------
notificationid | bigint | not null
pageid | bigint |
spaceid | bigint |
username | character varying(255) | not null
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"notifications_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (notificationid)
"n_pageid_idx" btree (pageid)
"n_spaceid_idx" btree (spaceid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fk594acc88c38fbea" FOREIGN KEY (pageid) REFERENCES content(contentid)
"fk594acc8b2dc6081" FOREIGN KEY (spaceid) REFERENCES spaces(spaceid)
Table "pagetemplates"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
templateid | bigint | not null
templatename | character varying(255) | not null
templatedesc | character varying(255) |
labels | character varying(255) |
content | text |
spaceid | bigint |
prevver | bigint |
version | integer | not null
creator | character varying(255) |
creationdate | timestamp without time zone |
lastmodifier | character varying(255) |
lastmoddate | timestamp without time zone |
Indexes:
"pagetemplates_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (templateid)
"pt_prevver_idx" btree (prevver)
"pt_spaceid_idx" btree (spaceid)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fkbc7ce96a17d4a070" FOREIGN KEY (prevver) REFERENCES pagetemplates(templateid)
"fkbc7ce96ab2dc6081" FOREIGN KEY (spaceid) REFERENCES spaces(spaceid)
Table "trackbacklinks"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------------+-----------------------------+-----------
linkid | bigint | not null
contenttype | character varying(255) | not null
viewcount | integer | not null
url | character varying(255) | not null
title | character varying(255) |
blogname | character varying(255) |
excerpt | character varying(255) |
contentid | bigint | not null
confancestors: used to speed up permissions checks, by allowing quick lookup of all a page's ancestors.
Table "confancestors"
Column | Type | Modifiers
------------------+---------+-----------
descendentid | bigint | not null
ancestorid | bigint | not null
ancestorposition | integer | not null
Indexes:
"confancestors_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (descendentid, ancestorposition)
Foreign-key constraints:
"fk9494e23c37e35a2e" FOREIGN KEY (ancestorid) REFERENCES content(contentid)
"fk9494e23cc45e94dc" FOREIGN KEY (descendentid) REFERENCES content(contentid)
The purpose of this document is to provide a workaround for customers using Confluence version 2.2.x
and who are experiencing slow search performance and/or Too many open files error in their logs.
This problem has been properly addressed as of Confluence 2.3. If upgrading is an option for you, we
recommend upgrading to the latest stable version.
The workaround
Index optimisation is performed over your entire search index periodically to maintain good search
performance. However, this process will lock down the index for the entire duration that it occurs.
Searching will not be possible during this time. For small Confluence instances with small indexes,
optimisation time is negligible. However, for larger instances, where optimisation is potentially expensive
to perform, it could cause a noticeable inconvenience for users.
In Confluence 2.2.x, index optimisation is scheduled to occur every time the index queue is flushed
(every minute). Optimisation does not need to performed this regularly. To fix this:
-Dconfluence.optimize.index.modulo=20
Setting it back to 1 will revert back to normal behaviour (optimize on every flush).
2. Restart Confluence
To address the Too many open files issue, you need to download the patched bonnie jar attached to
this issue: http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-7401. Copy the jar to your {[confluence/WEB-INF/
lib}} directory and remove the old one. Now restart and rebuild the index.
If are still experiencing problems after this, please file a support request at http://support.atlassian.com
and we'll investigate the issue further.
• How to Improve User Search Performance — If your Confluence instance contains thousands of
user accounts and you are experiencing performance issues when searching for users, the following
migration guide is for you.
• Integrating with Crowd
• JIRA User Management
° Delegate user management to use JIRA logins
- Revert from JIRA to internal user management
° JIRA User Management FAQ
• Adding a Group
• Adding a New User
• Adding or Removing a User from a Group
• Changing Usernames
• Editing User Details
• Global Groups Overview
• Global Permissions Overview
• Migrating to new User Management
• Removing a Group
• Removing a User
• Setting up Anonymous Access
• Viewing members of a group
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Manage Groups' in the left panel.
2. Enter a name for your group in the 'Add Group' input field and click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
directory^adminhome.gif!
Public Signup: Enabling public signup from the Administration Console allows users to sign themselves up
to the site.
By Confluence Administrators : If you want to restrict your site to a select group of users, you may
want to disable 'Public Signup'. In this instance, administrators with Confluence Administrator or System
Administrator permissions can add new users from the Administration Console.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Manage Users' in the left-hand panel.
2. Click the link 'Add new user' at the top of the page.
3. In the form displayed, enter the user's details: username, password, name and email address.
4. Click 'Create' to add the user.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Changing Usernames
Editing User Details
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Manage Users' in the left panel.
All members of the Confluence-Users group are listed in alphabetical order (first name). To find a
user, you can either browse through the pages; or do a search on the user's mail id or the group to
which they belong.
2. Click on the user link. This will display the user's current details and links to edit them.
3. Click 'Edit Groups'. This will display two lists of groups:
• 'Not a member of groups': All groups to which the user doesn't belong. To add the user to a
group, select a group and click 'Join'. Hold Ctrl and click to select more than one group.
• 'Member of groups': All groups to which the user belongs. Select a group and click 'Leave' to
remove the user from the group.
You cannot use the Edit Groups option to add or remove users from external groups, as Confluence
access to LDAP and JIRA groups is read only.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Changing Usernames
Editing User Details
Usernames can only be changed through direct update to the Confluence database.
1. If you have a database administrator, request that they approve the database-related steps
described below
2. If you are using JIRA user management, Revert from JIRA To Internal User Management
3. Backup Confluence
4. Creating a usermigration table:
5. Usernames that will be changed must be placed in the usermigration table with their current and
planned usernames:
6. If your DB administration tool does not support multiple SQL queries, these must be entered
individually.
update attachments
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update attachments
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update content
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update content
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update content
set username = newusername from usermigration u
where username = u.oldusername;
update extrnlnks
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update extrnlnks
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update links
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update notifications
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update notifications
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update pagetemplates
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update pagetemplates
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update spaces
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update spaces
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update spacepermissions
set permusername = newusername from usermigration u
where permusername = u.oldusername;
update spacepermissions
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update spacepermissions
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update contentlock
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update contentlock
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update os_user
set username = newusername from usermigration u
where username = u.oldusername;
update trackbacklinks
set creator = newusername from usermigration u
where creator = u.oldusername;
update trackbacklinks
set lastmodifier = newusername from usermigration u
where lastmodifier = u.oldusername;
update user
set name = newusername from usermigration u
8. Reassign personal spaces associated with the old username to the new username. The tilda (~) is
required as it is prepended to the space key of all personal spaces.
update spaces
set spacekey = '~newusername'
where spacekey = '~oldusername';
9. Each username is associated with a full name. For example, username 'jsmith' may have a full name
of 'John M Smith'. If this fullname needs to be changed, modify the fullname in the user or os_user
table.
All old usernames in Confluence should now be replaced with the new usernames from the
usermigration table.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Changing Usernames
Editing User Details
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on the link 'Manage Users' in the left panel.
2. Locate the user by doing a search on the user's mail id or the groups to which they belong.
3. Click on the user link. This will display the user's current details and links to edit them.
• View Profile : View the user's profile.
• Edit Groups : Add or remove this user from a group.
• Edit Details : Edit the user's name and email address. Changing a user's username is not
supported through the application, see Changing Usernames for other solutions.
• Set Password : Edit the user's password details.
• Deactivate : It is not possible to 'remove' a user if the user is responsible for content on the
site because Confluence will need the user information to maintain history of pages. In this
instance, you can deactivate the user so that they can no longer log in to Confluence.
• Remove : You can remove a user permanently if the user has not added or edited any content
on the site.
Deactivating users
This functionality was removed in Confluence 2.1.x. See Removing a User for more information.
RELATED TOPICS
2. confluence-users: This is the default group for all new users. Permissions you assign to this group
will be assigned to all newly signed-up users of Confluence.
Other user groups : A Confluence administrator can also group users together into user groups for more
convenient administration. Once created, groups become available at the space and page levels to allow
for flexible access control. A user in one of these groups will automatically be granted all permissions
granted to the group.
Anonymous users : Confluence treats all users who do not log in when they access Confluence as being
'anonymous'. You can grant anonymous 'Use Confluence' permission via the Global Permissions screen.
This will allow non-registered users to access pages and spaces in Confluence. A space administrator can
then further control anonymous access per space via the space permissions.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Changing Usernames
Editing User Details
Enabling or Disabling Public Signup
Fix Case Mismatches in Permissions
Global Groups Overview
Global Permissions Overview
Removing a Group
Permissions determine the actions which a user is allowed to perform within Confluence. Global
permissions are one of the levels of permission provided by Confluence.
To grant global permissions, go to the 'Global Permissions' section of the Administration Console. In order
to assign these permissions, you must already have the global 'Confluence Administrator' or 'System
Administrator' permission (described below). You can then assign global permissions to groups, individual
users and anonymous users. Further permissions are granted from the space administration screens.
On this page:
During the initial configuration of Confluence, the Setup Wizard asks for the username of the
System Administrator. This user will have the 'System Administrator' permission and will be a
member of the 'confluence-administrators' group.
• System Administrator – Users with this permission can perform all the Confluence administrative
functions, including the ones which the 'Confluence Administrator' permission does not allow.
• Confluence Administrator – Users with this permission can perform most, but not all, of the
Confluence administrative functions.
Tip: The two-tier administration is useful when you want to delegate some administrator privileges
to project managers or team leaders. You can give 'Confluence Administrator' permission to users who
should be able to perform most administrative functions, but should not be able to perform functions that
can compromise the security of the Confluence system.
The following functions are excluded from the 'Confluence Administrator' permission:
Granting the 'System Administrator' or 'Confluence Administrator' permission to a user will not
automatically grant the user access to all spaces in the site. These permissions will only give access to
the Administration Console.
Be aware, however, that users with 'System Administrator' can add themselves to the 'confluence-
administrators' group and become a super-user.
Going by the names, you would think the 'confluence-administrators' group and the 'Confluence
Administrator' permission are related – but they are not. To resolve confusion, we want to make
explicit that granting a user or group 'Confluence Administrator' permission is not the same as
granting them membership to the 'confluence-administrators' group. Granting the 'Confluence
Administrator' permission enables access to only a subset of the administrative functions. Granting
membership to the 'confluence-administrators' group, on the other hand, gives complete access.
1. Go to the Administration Console and click 'Global Permissions' in the 'Security' section of the left-
hand panel.
2. The 'View Global Permissions' screen appears. Click the 'Edit Permissions' button.
3. The 'Edit Global Permissions' screen appears, as shown below. Add or edit group and user
permissions as follows:
• To add permissions for a group:
° First add the group to Confluence, if you have not already done so.
° Now on the 'Edit Global Permissions' screen, enter the group name in the text box
labelled 'Grant browse permission to' in the 'Groups' section. You can click the magnifying
glass to search for the group name.
° Click the 'Add' button.
° The group will appear in the list and you can now edit its permissions.
username in the text box labelled 'Grant browse permission to' in the 'Individual Users'
section. You can click the magnifying glass to search for the username.
° Click the 'Add' button.
° The username will appear in the list and you can now edit its permissions.
A tick in the box indicates that the permission is granted. Click again to uncheck the
permission.
• To allow anonymous access to your Confluence site, check 'can use' in the 'Anonymous Access'
section. See more information.
• Click the 'Save All' button to save your changes.
In Confluence 2.7.2 and later, Confluence will let you know if there is a problem with some
permissions. In rare situations, you may see the following error messages below a permission:
• 'User/Group not found' — This message may appear if your LDAP repository is unavailable, or if
the user/group has been deleted after the permission was created.
• 'Case incorrect. Correct case is: xxxxxx' — This message may appear if the upper/lower case
in the permission does not match the case of the username or group name. If you see a
number of occurrences of this message, you should consider running the routine supplied to fix
the problem.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Changing Usernames
Editing User Details
Enabling or Disabling Public Signup
Fix Case Mismatches in Permissions
Global Groups Overview
Global Permissions Overview
Removing a Group
Removing a User
Security Overview
Setting up Anonymous Access
Troubleshooting LDAP External User Management
Viewing members of a group
In order to support advanced forms of user management, Confluence now uses the AtlassianUser
management framework, which can store users in the database (through Hibernate) instead of delegating
the user management to OSuser.
This page describes how to perform a manual migration of your users from OSuser to AtlassianUser.
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, there is no need to perform a manual migration of your users to the
AtlassianUser framework. If you are installing Confluence 2.7.0 or later for the first time, you will
automatically receive the AtlassianUser framework. If you are upgrading from an earlier version to
Confluence 2.7.0 or later and have not changed the default user management configuration, your
users will be automatically migrated. Refer to the details in the Confluence 2.7 Upgrade Guide.
For Confluence 2.6.x and earlier, Confluence delegates user management to OSuser by default. However,
you may wish to migrate your users away from OSuser for one or more of the following reasons:
The migration instructions below are valid for Confluence version 2.2 and later.
Please check that you are running the latest version of Confluence. If not, we strongly recommend that
you consider upgrading Confluence according to this guide. Confirm that you have upgraded successfully
before trying to add LDAP to the new version.
1. Find your Confluence base URL. To check this from Confluence, go to Administration > General
Configuration > Base Url. Record this for later in the process.
2. Make a backup of your:
• database
• Confluence home directory
• confluence/WEB-INF/classes/atlassian-user.xml (only if you have made changes)
If you do not create a backup, you cannot roll back to the old version if the migration is
unsuccessful.
3. Download hibernate_osuser_atlassian-user.xml and rename to atlassian-user.xml. Then copy this
file to your confluence/WEB-INF/classes directory. (You can overwrite the one that's there).
4. Restart Confluence.
5. Log in as a System Administrator, copy the address http://<BASEURL>/<contextpath>/admin/
osuser2atluser.jsp and paste it into your browser's address bar. Change <BASEURL> to your
actual base URL and <contextpath> to your context path (usually 'confluence') and follow the link.
6. Click the link Begin migration. You will know the migration has been successful if you see this
reported:
If you encounter errors, please create a support ticket at http://support.atlassian.com and attach
your application server logs.
7. Stop Confluence.
8. Start up Confluence and check that you can log in using the admin account you first set up when
running through the Confluence Setup Wizard. If not, re-examine your steps and repeat from the
point where you may have gone wrong.
RELATED TOPICS
To remove a group,
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Manage Groups' in the left panel. A list of all existing
groups is displayed along with links to remove them.
2. Click 'Remove' beside the group you want to remove. You will need to confirm your action before the
group is deleted.
RELATED TOPICS
It is not possible to remove a user if the user is responsible for content on the site, because
Confluence will need the user information to maintain a history of pages. If you wish to prevent such
a user from accessing Confluence, you can deactivate a user so that they can no longer log in to
Confluence.
You can remove a user if the user has not added or edited any content on the site.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Manage Users' in the left panel.
2. Find the user by searching on the username, full name or email address. You can also click 'Show all
users' to browse the list of all users.
3. Click the username. This will display the user's current details and links to edit them.
4. Click 'Remove' if the user is not responsible for any content on the site.
5. If the user is responsible for content on the site, you will need to deactivate the user (also known as
disabling the user):
• Remove the user from all groups that have the global 'Can Use' permission. Click 'Edit Groups'
to remove the person from the group(s).
• If the specific user has the global 'Can Use' permission, you will also need to remove this
permission.
The License Details page tells you how many users your Confluence instance is licensed to support,
and how many are currently registered The number of registered users includes only users who
have the 'Can Use' global permission. Deactivated users, as described above, are not included.
Deactivating users in Confluence 2.0.x and earlier
Earlier Confluence releases provide a 'Deactivate' link. If you click this link, the user will be
prevented from logging in to the Confluence site. This function was removed from Confluence 2.1.x
and later for performance reasons.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Group
Adding a New User
Adding or Removing a User from a Group
Changing Usernames
Editing User Details
You can enable public access to your site by granting the 'Use Confluence' permission to 'Anonymous'
users from the Administration Console.
This user category has been created for convenient administration of users who have not logged into the
site. Permissions assigned to this group apply to all anonymous users of the site.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Global Permissions' in the left panel.
2. Click 'Edit Permissions'.
3. Under 'Anonymous Access' check 'Can Use' Confluence.
Once you grant this permission, further permissions can be granted from the space administration
screens to control the viewing and editing privileges of anonymous users. See Space Permissions
Overview.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Manage Groups' in the left panel. This will list all
the existing groups on the site along with the number of users in each group (displayed within
parenthesis).
2. Click on the number within the paranthesis to display all the users in the group.
RELATED TOPICS
If your Confluence instance contains thousands of user accounts and you are experiencing performance
issues when searching for users, the following migration guide is for you.
Background
In Confluence 2.1, we introduced a new system for user management inside Confluence (atlassian-user)
that was more powerful than the previous system (OSUser). However, to avoid potential upgrade issues,
we continued to use OSUser when storing users in the local Confluence database.
The native atlassian-user storage format provides much more efficient searching, and greatly improves
the performance of user administration and Confluence's 'user picker' pop-up. We plan on migrating all
Confluence instances to the new format around version 2.6 or 2.7, but until then Confluence instances
with large numbers of users can still take advantage of these performance improvements by performing
the migration manually.
Migration procedure
Do not use this procedure if you have LDAP user management enabled.
This guide assumes that you are using Confluence's local users and groups. If you have already
configured Confluence for LDAP user/group management and are experiencing user management
slowness, please follow the guide for Requesting External User Management Support.
Manual migration no longer required from Confluence 2.7.0
This page describes how to perform a manual migration of your users from OSuser to AtlassianUser.
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, there is no need to perform a manual migration of your users to the
AtlassianUser framework. If you are installing Confluence 2.7.0 or later for the first time, you will
automatically receive the AtlassianUser framework. If you are upgrading from an earlier version to
Confluence 2.7.0 or later and have not changed the default user management configuration, your
users will be automatically migrated. Refer to the details in the Confluence 2.7 Upgrade Guide.
Atlassian's Crowd identity management system can be integrated with Confluence. Please see Integrating
Crowd with Confluence.
1. The examples used in this document are based on Tomcat Application Server and the MySQL
database. The same concepts (but not the verbatim examples) can be applied to other application
servers or databases.
2. Always install Confluence with a new database. Do not attempt to use the existing JIRA database,
with either JDBC or data source. Do not add any spaces or content once Confluence installation is
complete. Users in Confluence will no longer be valid once you switch over to using your JIRA users.
3. If JIRA is using LDAP for authentication, you should not use JIRA for Confluence user management.
Use Add LDAP Integration instead.
4. If you have existing users or groups in Confluence, these users will not be available once you switch
to using JIRA's user management. Any existing content will no longer be associated with valid users.
5. If you run into a problem, check the Troubleshooting section.
Technical Overview
In the configuration described below, Confluence will use JIRA's database for its user and group
information. The Confluence application will have two database connections:
1. A connection to the primary database, set up during Confluence installation. This database stores all
the normal Confluence data: spaces, pages, comments, etc.
2. A read-only data source connection to JIRA's database, set up after Confluence is installed.
Confluence reads information about users and groups from this database.
The reason this works is because both JIRA and Confluence use the same user management library,
OSUser. The OSUser database schema is the same in JIRA and Confluence, so Confluence can easily read
from JIRA's tables to get the user and group information.
Skip this step if you have installed Confluence already and completed the setup wizard.
1. If you are running JIRA standalone please follow these instructions for installing Confluence.
2. If you have JIRA deployed under your own tomcat server, please follow these instructions.
3. Ensure that Confluence is running and has been set up, that is, you have completed the setup wizard
and verified that you can create pages.
In order to delegate all user authentication attempts and group membership queries to JIRA, Confluence
needs to be aware of JIRA's database, and hence the user tables in JIRA's database.
In Tomcat this is achieved by specifying JIRA's database as a resource. You will need to declare it inside
the <context> descriptor you set up in Step One.
If there is an existing block of <Resource> in the <context> descriptor, please do not replace it.
Rather, just add the following <Resource> block inside the <context> descriptor.
If you are running Confluence WAR/EAR version separate to JIRA, or under JIRA standalone 3.3 and
later, your Confluence context will be in the confluence.xml file.
If you are running Confluence standalone separate to JIRA, or Confluence WAR/EAR version under
an older version of JIRA, your Confluence context will be in the server.xml file. You should never
have a Confluence context in both.
The DataSource configuration below is using MySQL as an example. You will need to modify these
settings according to the database that you are using.
• Tomcat 5.5.x: This version of Tomcat has a new syntax for specifying resources (note that you don't
add a new context to server.xml, just add the Resource to your existing Context):
Ensure that your JDBC driver is on the classpath of your application server. In this example, a jar for the
mysql driver should be in the /common/lib folder.
Please perform this step after you have completed the Confluence setup wizard.
1. Find the osuser.xml file in the /confluence/WEB-INF/classes folder and open in a text editor.
Comment out the following block of code:
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcAccessProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcProfileProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<opensymphony-user>
<!--
Authenticators can take properties just like providers.
This smart authenticator should work for 'most' cases - it dynamically looks
up
the most appropriate authenticator for the current server.
-->
<authenticator class="com.opensymphony.user.authenticator.SmartAuthenticator"/>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcAccessProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcProfileProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<!--
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateAccessProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateProfileProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
-->
In this example, JiraDS is the name of the JIRA datasource you are sharing with Confluence. If you have
changed the name in step 2 of this documentation, you will need change all occurences of the value here
too.
In some cases you may need to customise the behaviour of the JiraJdbc classes. You can do this by
setting properties within the osuser.xml file.
Since user management is now conducted in JIRA and outside of Confluence, you will need to switch
external user management on.
NOTE: Activating external user management will remove user and group management options
from Confluence. Your users will also no longer be able to edit their full name or email address inside
Confluence. (If they want to, they would have to do so in JIRA).
For answers relating to JIRA User Management, click on any query below.
Troubleshooting
Missing the database driver library. On standalone or Apache Tomcat, download the database jar to the
common\lib directory.
If your log outputs an error with "FATAL [user.provider.jdbc.JDBCCredentialsProvider] Could not list users.
org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL
'null'", you are using the incorrect Tomcat format for specifying the Datasource resource. You should
check your Tomcat version and use the alternative format.
See Requesting External User Management Support for information on logging a support request.
RELATED TOPICS
Administrators can revert a Confluence instance that uses JIRA for user management back to internal
user management. With few users, it is easier to manually recreate the JIRA users and groups in
Confluence. For more users, migrate JIRA users and groups into the Confluence database instead.
To manually recreate the users, you must first have an instance of Confluence with internal user
management and your data.
• If you have made limited customisations to Confluence and migrating would be desirable - follow the
upgrade guide and import your data to a new installation.
• Alternatively, if you have made extensive customisations or do not wish to migrate - go to
delegating user management to JIRA and remove your JIRA user management by undoing the
instructions in revese order. These steps are specific to your instance so cannot be covered here.
Then manually create JIRA's groups and users in Confluence. If you have assigned permissions in
Confluence to a group which exists in JIRA, you must create a group in Confluence with the same name.
If a user who exists in JIRA has created content or has had permissions assigned to them, you must also
create that user in Confluence.
Users of non-mySQL databases must be experienced enough to modify the SQL to work in their
database as examples are provided for mySQL only. If you adapt the SQL to another database,
please consider posting the SQL you used to the comments.
Users of Confluence 2.0 or older
Pre-Confluence 2.0 users may need to modify the instructions to your older schema, or upgrade
Confluence. For example, on Confluence 2.1.5 and older, SQL references to the property table must
be updated to be called OS_PROPERTYENTRY in all upper-case.
Creating backups is the only way to restore your data if something goes wrong.
Replace the Confluence user and group permissions with JIRA by transferring table content. The SQL
provided is specific to mySQL and must be modifed for other databases. For each SQL statement, do a
find and replace on the JIRA and Confluence table names to your table names. In the examples, they are
called confluence224 and jira364.
6. Merge relevant content from JIRA's propertyentry and propertystring tables into Confluence's
os_propertyentry table. Some versions of SQL use "0" instead of "false" for boolean values.
• If you have made limited customisations to Confluence and migrating would be desirable - Install
a new instance of Confluence using the upgrade guide and use Method 1 to import your updated
database.
• Alternatively, if you have made extensive customisations or do not wish to migrate - go to
Delegating User Management to JIRA and remove your JIRA user management by undoing the
instructions in revese order. These steps are specific to your instance so cannot be covered here.
Done! Note that the original administrator may not display their groups correctly, however their groups
are still present.
For answers relating to JIRA User Management, click on any query below.
Troubleshooting
Missing the database driver library. On standalone or Apache Tomcat, download the database jar to the
common\lib directory.
If your log outputs an error with "FATAL [user.provider.jdbc.JDBCCredentialsProvider] Could not list users.
org.apache.commons.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL
'null'", you are using the incorrect Tomcat format for specifying the Datasource resource. You should
check your Tomcat version and use the alternative format.
See Requesting External User Management Support for information on logging a support request.
Grouping page for external user management documentation (including LDAP, ActiveDirectory, etc). What
resource do you need?
Check the listing of children pages below for other useful resources.
If your user management is being handled outside of Confluence by JIRA you will need to turn on the
external management option in Confluence, from the Administration Console.
• If you would like to handle your user management outside of Confluence via Crowd, you will need to
turn on the external management option.
• For Confluence 2.5.6 and later: External user management when running with Crowd is optional.
You can leave external user management off and still run Confluence under Crowd. But external
user management is recommended, because it allows you to use Crowd's powerful cross-directory
administration features instead of Confluence's more limited Confluence-centric user management.
If your user management is being done with LDAP, you must not turn on external user management,
although users and groups which exist in your LDAP repository cannot be modified.
Activating an external user management sytem will remove all user and group management options from
Confluence. The assignment of permissions to groups and users is still carried out within Confluence, but
the creation of groups and users is not.
This will also prevent users from signing up to the site, as well as editing their name, email and password
particulars from within Confluence.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the left-hand panel.
2. In the 'General Configuration' screen, click 'Edit'.
3. Select 'On' beside 'External User Management'.
4. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
Atlassian's Crowd is a web-based single sign-on (SSO) tool that simplifies application provisioning
and identity management. Crowd supports features that Confluence-only LDAP integration cannot
support, such as multiple user directories.
Confluence can delegate user authentication to LDAP and use LDAP group memberships to set the user's
Confluence access permissions. This also allows Active Directory (AD) integration. This guide is for both
users enabling LDAP, and those upgrading their LDAP scheme to support group management. It applies to
LDAP over HTTP and SSL/HTTPS.
Once the LDAP is enabled and LDAP users are using Confluence, you cannot revert to local user
management without those users being disabled. However, you can create new local users while using
LDAP integration.
To decide if this is the correct document for you, please answer these 2 questions:
1. Are you using Atlassian-User LDAP on Confluence 2.1.x? If so, follow the 2.1.x LDAP Upgrade
Instructions instead.
2. Are you using a version of Confluence older than 2.1? If you are using 2.0.x, follow OSUser LDAP
integration instead. If it is older than 2.0, you must upgrade Confluence.
If you answered no to the above 2 points, then this is the correct guide for you.
Please check that you are running the latest version of Confluence. If not, we strongly recommend that
you consider upgrading Confluence according to this guide. Confirm that you have upgraded successfully
before trying to add LDAP to the new version.
Integration can only be setup by an administrator confident with running user queries against their
LDAP directory. You should request assistance from your LDAP or Active Directory administrator for the
following steps.
1. Check your server LDAP version. Supported versions are v2 and v3. Supported LDAP servers include
OpenLDAP, Microsoft Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, and any server that uses Java JNDI-LDAP
mapping.
2. Your LDAP or Active Directory server must support static groups. This means that the user DNs must
be stored against a membership attribute inside an LDAP groups. An example of a static group is
shown below:
<useUnqualifiedUsernameForMembershipComparison>true
</useUnqualifiedUsernameForMembershipComparison>
This step assumes that you have at least one Confluence user account which has System Administrator
permissions for your Confluence site. For this account, please check that there isn't an account on your
LDAP system that has the exact same username.
If there is an LDAP account with the exact same username, and you do not have another local Confluence
account that has System Administrator permissions rights, then you should perform one of the following:
• create another account, that doesn't exist on LDAP, to act as the administrator
OR:
• rename your local Confluence administrator account to use another username that doesn't exist in
LDAP
OR:
• rename your LDAP account
This will ensure that you will have an account that has sufficient rights to administer your site after you
migrate your users.
Tip: To set up all LDAP users as members of particular Confluence internal groups, you can try the
LDAP Dynamic Groups Plugin.
Installation complete!
Troubleshooting
Check your Confluence version
This documentation applies to Confluence 2.7. There are a couple key bugs that have been resolved in
Confluence 2.6 or 2.6.1, but that pertain to 2.5.6 and 2.5.7.
More information
Support
Failing all else, lodge a support request. Be sure to attach your atlassian-user.xml, a copy of the
output from the External User Test tool, and a zip of your Confluence logs.
This Authenticator adds users to confluence-users as they log in. To use it, change the line:
<authenticator class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceAuthenticator"/>
in <Confluence-Install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/seraph-config.xml to:
<authenticator class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceGroupJoiningAuthenticator"/>
If you are using Confluence 2.2 you need to download the ConfluenceGroupJoiningAuthenticator.class file
and put it in WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/user.
The LDAP server connection is specified by manually editing the file atlassian-user.xml. Confluence 2.3
onwards supports multiple LDAP servers by repeating the instructions below for each server so that there
are multiple repositories defined.
....
...
<baseUserNamespace>dc=staff,dc=perftest,dc=atlassian,dc=private</baseUserNamespace>
<baseGroupNamespace>dc=groups,dc=perftest,dc=atlassian,dc=private</baseGroupNamespace>
<usernameAttribute>cn</usernameAttribute>
<userSearchFilter>(objectClass=inetorgperson)</userSearchFilter>
<firstnameAttribute>givenname</firstnameAttribute>
<surnameAttribute>sn</surnameAttribute>
<emailAttribute>mail</emailAttribute>
<groupnameAttribute>cn</groupnameAttribute>
<groupSearchFilter>(objectClass=groupOfNames)</groupSearchFilter>
<membershipAttribute>member</membershipAttribute>
</ldap>
...
<userSearchAllDepths>false</userSearchAllDepths>
The above settings configure the search depth on users and groups. If you set either attribute to:
• false - Confluence will search only for users/groups directly defined in <baseUserNamespace> and
<baseGroupNamespace>.
• true - Confluence will search for users/groups defined in the above namespaces and also in
namespaces nested within them. For example, if your users are distributed across multiple
namespaces, you should set this option to true.
Setting the value to true may have a high cost in performance for large directories, because
Confluence will search the whole tree and not just the immediate namespace.
<poolingOn>true</poolingOn>
<maxSize>0</maxSize>
<initSize>10</initSize>
<prefSize>10</prefSize>
<debugLevel>none</debugLevel>
<securityProtocol>plain ssl</securityProtocol>
<authentication>simple</authentication>
<timeout>0</timeout>
<initialContextFactory>com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory</initialContextFactory>
<batchSize>100</batchSize>
<timeToLive>0</timeToLive>
However, if you want to override the default values listed above, you can add the value onto the end like
so:
...
<groupnameAttribute>cn</groupnameAttribute>
<groupSearchFilter>(objectClass=groupOfNames)</groupSearchFilter>
<membershipAttribute>member</membershipAttribute>
<initSize>20</initSize>
</ldap>
It is important that the connection pool timeout value be set to 0, as this will force Atlassian User (via the
JNDI layer) to clean up lingering connections that have lived past one request. More information about
LDAP pools here.
Explanation
User Authentication Internal Users Internal Groups LDAP Users LDAP Groups
LDAP Without
Groups
LDAP With Groups
Follow the instructions below to integrate LDAP without groups, where if a username exists in both
Confluence and LDAP, they use their LDAP password to login. You still maintain users from Confluence
and use internal Confluence groups for group permissions.
Skip this stage if you wish to use LDAP with groups i.e. to have users and groups automatically updated
from LDAP, and to use LDAP groups for group permissions.
Important Points
• LDAP users will be mapped to Confluence. If the Confluence username coincides with the LDAP
username, the password lookup is done against LDAP. Group management will happen in
Confluence.
• Each LDAP user must be added to an internal Confluence group having Can Use permissions in order
for those LDAP users to access Confluence. If a password is created for an LDAP user in Confluence,
it will be ignored as the LDAP password will override it.
Instructions
If you do not wish Confluence to retrieve any of your LDAP groups and display them inside Confluence
then you can do this by specifying a dummy value for the groupSearchFilter filter in your atlassian-
user.xml file. That is, update your atlassian-user.xml file with the following:
<groupSearchFilter>(objectClass=dummyValue)</groupSearchFilter>
<baseUserNamespace>cn=users,dc=ad,dc=atlassian,dc=com</baseUserNamespace>
<baseGroupNamespace>ou=groups,dc=ad,dc=atlassian,dc=com</baseGroupNamespace>
<usernameAttribute>sAMAccountName</usernameAttribute>
<userSearchFilter>(objectClass=user)</userSearchFilter>
<firstnameAttribute>givenname</firstnameAttribute>
<surnameAttribute>sn</surnameAttribute>
<emailAttribute>mail</emailAttribute>
<groupnameAttribute>cn</groupnameAttribute>
<groupSearchFilter>(objectClass=dummyValue)</groupSearchFilter>
<membershipAttribute>member</membershipAttribute>
<userSearchAllDepths>false</userSearchAllDepths>
<groupSearchAllDepths>false</groupSearchAllDepths>
Please note: You will still have to provide a valid LDAP DN for baseGroupNamespace. You could use the
base DN for example.
For some LDAP servers, it might be necessary to configure Confluence to connect to multiple LDAP
servers. This functionality is available in Confluence 2.3 and above, and has a separate guide: Configuring
multiple LDAP repositories.
RELATED TOPICS
This document is only for users using Confluence prior to v2.7. It has been deprecated from
Confluence 2.7 onwards.
For Confluence 2.7.0 and above, all user management is performed by AtlassianUser as described in
Understanding User Management in Confluence.
Description
There are two kinds of Confluence/LDAP integration available:
User Authentication Internal Users Internal Groups LDAP Users LDAP Groups
LDAP Without
Groups
LDAP With Groups
This guide covers LDAP without groups, where if a username exists in both Confluence and LDAP, they
use their LDAP password to login. You still maintain users from Confluence and use internal Confluence
groups for group permissions.
Alternatively, you may use LDAP with Groups to have users and groups automatically updated from LDAP,
and use LDAP groups for group permissions.
Applies For
Important Points
• Only the password lookup is done against LDAP and only if the Confluence username coincides
with the LDAP username. Users and user profiles are still managed in Confluence. See technical
explanation below.
• Confluence account must be created for each LDAP user, as they do not automatically have access.
For an LDAP user to access Confluence, a site administrator will still need to create an account for
them. The password in this Confluence account will be ignored as the LDAP password will override it.
• User management in Confluence 2.0 and earlier is handled by OSUser. OSUser is configured through
the osuser.xml file located in confluence/WEB-INF/classes.
Instructions
CAUTION: Make sure that when you first set up Confluence, you make no changes to the default
osuser.xml. Once Confluence is up and running, you can then apply the changes described here to enable
LDAP integration.
Step One: Open the osuser.xml file located in your home directory under WEB-INF/classes
In the osuser.xml file, the CredentialsProviders are responsible for authenticating passwords. The default
CachingCredentialsProvider looks in the Confluence database. To enable LDAP aunthentication, you will
need to add a LDAPCredentialsProvider, so that LDAP users can also be authenticated:
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceLDAPCredentialsProvider">
<property name="java.naming.factory.initial">com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory</property>
<property name="java.naming.provider.url">ldap://localhost:389</property>
<property name="searchBase">dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="uidSearchName">cn</property>
<!--
<property name="java.naming.security.principal">cn=Manager,dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="java.naming.security.credentials">secret</property>
<property name="exclusive-access">true</property>
-->
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateAccessProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateProfileProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.opensymphony.user.provider.ldap.LDAPCredentialsProvider">
<property name="java.naming.factory.initial">com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory</property>
<property name="java.naming.provider.url">ldap://localhost:389</property>
<property name="searchBase">dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="uidSearchName">cn</property>
<!--
<property name="java.naming.security.principal">cn=Manager,dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="java.naming.security.credentials">secret</property>
<property name="exclusive-access">true</property>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateAccessProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateProfileProvider</
property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</
property>
</provider>
• If your LDAP server is not configured to allow anonymous lookups, you need to:
° remove comment tags
° enter the username; including searchBase (currently set to cn=Manager,dc=atlassian,dc=com)
° enter password (currently set to secret)
The Credentials (password) checking is a separate operation from user-profile lookups. The profile can
be loaded from the Confluence database, but the password is looked up from LDAP. Furthermore, multiple
credentials providers can be specified (here, LDAP and OSUser), and if one fails, the other will be used.
This allows non-LDAP users to log in with their Confluence password.
RELATED TOPICS
This page describes the function of each of the tags in an atlassian-user.xml file.
Then you will need to make the following changes to your osuser.xml file:
1. replace
com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.Caching
with
bucket.user.providers.Caching
com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider
com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider
com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider
to
bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider
bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider
bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider
2. and replace
com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceHibernateConfigProvider
with
bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider
Alternatively
You can just reconfigure the new osuser.xml with your changes.
Availability
Confluence 2.3 and above support multiple LDAP servers configured in atlassian-user.xml. Instructions
are below.
Prerequisites
Before reading this, ensure you understand the configuration details outlined in Customising atlassian-
user.xml. This describes how to configure a single LDAP repository in Confluence, and is prerequisite
knowledge for following the instructions below.
For brevity, all examples on this page are partial examples. A complete atlassian-user.xml LDAP
configuration can be found in Customising atlassian-user.xml.
Configuration
To configure multiple LDAP repositories in Confluence, put multiple <ldap>...</ldap> entries into
confluence/WEB-INF/classes/atlassian-user.xml.
The order of the entries in the file will be the order that the repositories are searched for users. That
is, if a user tries to log in with the username jsmith, the first repository in atlassian-user.xml will
be searched for the user with the username jsmith. If no user is found in that repository, the second
repository specified in atlassian-user.xml will be searched.
Here is a partial configuration that connects Confluence to two different LDAP servers. They are
given the identifiers ldap1 and ldap2, and connect to the servers ldap-sf.example.org and ldap-
nyc.example.org respectively.
<atlassian-user>
<repositories>
<ldap key="ldap1" name="San Francisco Example Repository" cache="true">
<host>ldap-sf.example.org</host>
<port>389</port>
</ldap>
</ldap>
Points to note:
The main side effect of configuring multiple LDAP servers is degrading performance. There are many
activities in Confluence where user or group information is retrieved:
• logging in
• user/group searches
• permission checks when viewing or editing a page.
Confluence tries to cache as much information as possible from the LDAP queries, but almost certainly
adding multiple LDAP servers will degrade the performance of the application. This is especially true if any
of the LDAP servers are geographically distant from Confluence, where any LDAP query has a significant
latency (> 50 ms roundtrip).
It also possible, but not usually recommended, for Confluence to connect twice to the same server. When
connecting twice to the same server, you must not have overlapping group or user namespaces in the
LDAP tree.
Here is an partial configuration, retrieving two separate LDAP user branches, but only one LDAP group
branch. To configure only a single group branch, the group filter in the second LDAP repository searches
for a non-existent value so it will not return any results. (This is generally fast as long as your LDAP
server has an index on objectClass for the given tree section.)
<atlassian-user>
<repositories>
<ldap key="ldap1" name="Example Repository, SF user tree" cache="true">
<host>ldap.example.org</host>
<port>389</port>
<!-- ... remainder of connection configuration ... -->
Points to note:
• each repository will have its own connection pool, so Confluence will use twice as many connections
to the LDAP server
• performance will typically be degraded, as discussed in Side effects above
• each server must have a unique key attribute
• each server must include the full LDAP configuration, including baseUserNamespace,
baseGroupNamespace and so on
• Confluence's internal repository, the <hibernate> repository, must be specified last.
Related pages
Customising atlassian-user.xml
Add LDAP Integration
During some operations such as rendering pages, Confluence makes a large number of queries to the
user management subsystem (OSUser). To cater for this, the OSUser providers built in to Confluence in
v1.0 performed a certain amount of in-memory caching of user identities. Unfortunately, this means that
if you configure Confluence to use some other provider (such as LDAP or JIRA), this caching is no longer
performed, and the application slows significantly as a result.
This document is aimed at Confluence users who have, or wish to have Confluence use an external user
management through customising their osuser.xml file. If you are just using Confluence's built-in user-
management, you do not need to read this document.
Note
While the caching providers should work with any OSUser provider, we have only tested them against
Confluence's built-in user-management, and the JIRA provider that ships with Confluence.
Provider Configuration
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property name="chain.classname">
com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider
</property>
<property name="chain.configuration.provider.class">
com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceHibernateConfigProvider
</property>
</provider>
1. The class-name of the provider that will ultimately be providing the credentials, as the property
chain.classname
2. Any properties that need to be passed to that next provider. If the next provider requires a property
configuration.provider.class, then you can pass that property to the provider by prepending
chain. to the property name: chain.configuration.provider.class
Deprecation Notice
A new improved LDAP integration was introduced in Confluence 2.1. This document describes the
old style LDAP integration and has been deprecated. If you are new to Confluence and have not set
up LDAP integration before, we recommend using the new LDAP integration.
RELATED TOPICS
For answers relating to LDAP User Management, click on any query below.
Troubleshooting
If there is an LDAP user with the same username as your administrator account, you must now use their
password to login. LDAP logins override internal logins.
To login, the user must be a member of one or more groups that have been granted 'Can Use' permission
from the Administration -> Global Permissions -> Group Permissions.
Confluence fails
to start with error 'Error creating bean with name 'userManager' defined in class path resource
[atlassianUserContext.xml]'?
Your atlassian.xml file may contain filters with characters that must be escaped from XML. Check here for
details.
Are your users or groups located in subtrees beneath the directory returned by the search
filter? If so, you may need to add <usersearchalldepths>TRUE</usersearchalldepths> or
<groupsearchalldepths>TRUE</groupsearchalldepths> to your atlassian-user.xml See Map LDAP
Users and Groups for details.
See Requesting External User Management Support for information on logging a support request.
General Questions
All LDAP users with 'Can Use' permission can be viewed from the user browser, even if they have
never logged in. When an LDAP user logs in for the first time, a Confluence user account is created
automatically to store their information. You have read-only access to LDAP groups, and can add/remove
Confluence internal groups to any user.
Your user count is determined by the number of internal users plus the number of LDAP users who can
potentially login. LDAP users that are a member of an LDAP group with 'Can Use' permission granted in
Confluence can all potentially login, which means that all members of groups with this permission granted
will be counted towards your license. To manage your license usage, only grant login permission to AD
groups where all members need accounts. You may like to setup a special confluence LDAP group if no
combination of your existing groups is suitable.
Users are not deleted from Confluence, but their logins are disabled within one hour as they expire in the
cache. Only non-LDAP groups are retained. Refer to the overview for more detail.
LDAP groups or users granted 'Can Use' permission under 'Global Permissions' can login to Confluence.
If a user is in Confluence
with one password, and an LDAP user with the same username is added, which password gets used?
The LDAP login has priority over the Confluence login. If LDAP 'Can Use' permission is removed or the
user is deleted, the Confluence login will still work.
When LDAP is enabled, it is normal for the user browser to return two copies of users who have both
LDAP and internal users accounts. If you are interested in a fix for this, please vote towards 'User
browser shows duplicate accounts when a user exists both locally and in LDAP'.
As mentioned above, LDAP login has priority over the confluence login; however only the password is
taken into account here. You can log in with either the lowercase or UPPERCASE username.
No, Confluence has no group types. However, you can configure Confluence to only recognise some
of these groups over others. For example, you can configure Confluence to only recognise distribution
groups. this is done by adjusting the groupSearchFilter in your atlassian-user.xml file.
Yes, you can do this by configuring multiple repositories: one for each domain. More instructions on how
to do this can be found here: http://confluence.atlassian.com/x/AgDUAg
Yes.
No, each child group must be individually specified instead. You may wish to vote towards support for
nested groups at CONF-6755.
Domino servers allow user groups to be set as 'mail-only', 'access control' and 'multi-purpose'. If the
groups are set to 'mail-only', when Confluence queries the Domino LDAP server about a given user,
Domino will return null. Groups that are created as 'multi-purpose' seem to work fine.
Other Questions
For troubleshooting, please create a problem report. General enquiries should be posted to a support
ticket
1. Import your LDAP server's public certificate into the Confluence JVM keystore. This is the certificate
that the LDAP server will use to set up the SSL encryption, and you can use any alias of your
choosing in place of "ldapCert".
The keytool will ask you for a password. The default password is "changeit" without the quotes.
4. Verify that the certificate has been added successfully by entering the following command:
5. Ensure that you've updated JAVA_OPTS to specify the path to the keystore, as specified in
Connecting to SSL services, before restarting tomcat/Confluence.
There's no need to specify an alias for Confluence to use; on connecting to the LDAP server, it will search
through the keystore to find a certificate to match the key being presented by the server.
Confluence supplies an 'External User Test' tool (also called 'Paddle') that will test the LDAP settings in
your atlassian-user.xml file. This will help you to diagnose problems with external user management,
such as:
LDAP is the protocol used for external user management by Active Directory and other LDAP directories.
From Confluence version 2.8, the External User Test tool is integrated into the Administration
Console. In previous versions of Confluence, this tool was available as a separate utility called
'Paddle'. If you are running an earlier version of Confluence, please refer to the Confluence 2.7
documentation or choose the relevant Confluence version from the list of previous versions on the
documentation home page.
On this page:
Running the External User Test Tool via the Administration Console
Note: You will need to restart your Confluence server each time you make changes to your
atlassian-user.xml file. To avoid this, consider running the tool outside of Confluence.
1. First verify that external user management is enabled for your Confluence instance:
• Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'General Configuration' in the 'Configuration'
section of the left-hand panel.
• Verify that the 'External user management' option is turned on (in the 'Security and Privacy'
section).
2. Still in the 'Administration Console', click 'External User Test' in the 'Administration' section of the
left-hand panel.
The 'External User Test' will only appear if you have external user management enabled, as
described in the preceding step.
3. The results of the test will appear in the main panel of the screen. Refer to the screenshot below for
an example, and to the output samples lower down on this page.
Steps in Detail
1. Copy the Paddle jar file into a directory where you have permission to create files. You will find this
file at the following location in your Confluence Installation directory: <Confluence-Installation>/
confluence/WEB-INF/lib/atlassian-paddle-5.jar
2. Download the properties file attached to this page and put it into the same directory as the jar file.
3. Copy your atlassian-user.xml file into the same directory. You will find this file at the following
location in your Confluence Installation directory: <Confluence-Installation>/confluence/WEB-
INF/classes/atlassian-user.xml.
4. Run java -jar paddle-5.jar.
Parameters
Sample Output
Below are some examples of the output from the user test tool. The output is the same, whether you run
the tool via the Administration Console or outside Confluence.
###############################################################################################################
###############################################################################################################
User: cn=foobar2092828899,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users236420517,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users1970486739,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar1810841610,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users646381955,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users841429091,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar1678090341,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users971262324,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users1400937719,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar625635825,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users1866930491,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users80556787,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar1740817394,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users1866930491,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users80556787,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar39774714,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users902164367,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users93075839,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar1748690196,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users1386043681,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users1418978137,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar1958046554,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users78102241,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users220323310,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
User: cn=foobar1541805698,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Member of:
cn=ldap-confluence-users1736591783,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
cn=ldap-confluence-users91103896,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TEST 2: Search and list 10 groups
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users16368779,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar1588244344,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar997638232,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1474202427,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1371091481,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar794627990,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar904159761,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1992607123,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar839977082,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar725629285,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1317948366,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users1721354031,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar991592891,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1710975716,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1505673129,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1924966176,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar799226338,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1999491022,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar14075397,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar539697111,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar112108820,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1369772211,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users1418978137,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar1588906497,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar713515675,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar111198746,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1413209068,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1748690196,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1650270608,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1083182874,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar397077941,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar982743351,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1305199694,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users1970486739,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar547480036,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar2092828899,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1150791207,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1648997840,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar632840294,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1688785372,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1402211544,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1360676914,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1900838417,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar174731773,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users93075839,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar1197670610,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1478107215,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar477128147,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar122705808,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar847443321,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar39774714,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar797719296,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1695434944,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1251231239,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar2524660,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users91103896,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar991592891,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1688694241,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1924966176,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1070601909,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar95317734,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1999491022,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar62701314,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar14075397,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1541805698,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar369641998,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users78102241,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar997638232,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1588244344,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1783755629,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1371091481,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar904159761,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar794627990,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar104918275,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar839977082,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar725629285,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1958046554,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users236420517,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
Members:
cn=foobar799557307,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1258451414,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1041699029,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar2092828899,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar547480036,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar2111497410,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1648997840,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1776604828,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1121496402,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
cn=foobar1954769270,ou=users,dc=example,dc=com
Group: cn=ldap-confluence-users283478949,ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com
This is an example of the output when the LDAP server is not available:
###############################################################################################################
###############################################################################################################
Failed to connect to LDAP server: Failed to connect to LDAP server with provider URL ldap://
ldap.example.com:389: ldap.example.com:389
com.atlassian.paddle.connection.ConnectionException: Failed to connect to LDAP server with provider
URL ldap://ldap.example.com:389: ldap.example.com:389
at
com.atlassian.paddle.connection.DefaultConnectionFactory.createFriendlyLdapException(DefaultConnectionFactory.
at
com.atlassian.paddle.connection.DefaultConnectionFactory.createConnection(DefaultConnectionFactory.java:35)
at com.atlassian.paddle.task.DefaultTaskRunner.runTask(DefaultTaskRunner.java:33)
at com.atlassian.paddle.Paddle.testConnectivity(Paddle.java:98)
.
.
.
<<<snip>>>
This is an example of the output when the atlassian-user.xml file is not correctly configured for LDAP
user management:
###############################################################################################################
###############################################################################################################
If you have set up Confluence with AtlassianUser integration and attempted a login with an LDAP/AD
account and got a page titled "Not Permitted" here are the steps to troubleshoot this:
• Have you assiged USE permission to the relevant LDAP groups from the Administration > Global
Permissons page?
Before an LDAP user can login and use Confluence, the LDAP group they belong to must be given USE
permission directly. (Please note: nested groups is not supported in Confluence as yet, so you cannot
specify the parent group. If you want this feature, please vote for it here.)
• Does an account exist on your LDAP/AD server that has the same name as your local admin
account? (for example, is there an acccount on LDAP called 'admin'?)
If so, then you will not be able to login with your local admin account once you enable LDAP integration.
To rectify this, you need to either rename your LDAP admin account or rollback your LDAP integration and
create another Confluence admin account.
• You have assigned USE permission to the relevant LDAP groups, but LDAP users in those groups still
get "Not Permitted"?
Here, you need to check if Confluence is actually aware that your LDAP users belong to those LDAP
groups. To work this out, here is what we need from you:
1. login as the local admin account you created when you first set up Confluence.
2. enable profiling by appending ?profile=on to the end of a Confluence URL (say the URL of the
dashboard, if you happen to be on that page) and hit enter to refresh the page. This setting will now
be enabled and cause additional information to be written to your log files to help us diagnose the
problem.
3. Now browse to the Administration > Manage Users screen and do a search for any LDAP user.
4. Now click on the user to view their details (including the groups they belong to).
5. Now submit a support ticket at http://support.atlassian.com and attach:
• a screenshot of the user details page
• your server logs files
If you are feeling brave, you can attempt to decipher the logs yourself. Here's how:
[0ms] -
com.atlassian.user.impl.ldap.adaptor.LDAPStaticGroupAdaptor_search((&(objectClass=groupOfNames)
(member=cn=confadmin,ou=users,ou=people,ou=functest,dc=atlassian,dc=com)))
[0ms] - com.atlassian.user.impl.ldap.repository.DefaultLDAPRepository_getLDAPContext
[0ms] -
com.atlassian.user.impl.ldap.adaptor.LDAPStaticGroupAdaptor_search_JNDI_RAW_((&(objectClass=groupOfNames)
(&(objectClass=groupOfNames)
(member=cn=confadmin,ou=users,ou=people,ou=functest,dc=atlassian,dc=com))))
This means that Confluence is using this LDAP search filter (&(objectClass=groupOfNames)
(member=cn=confadmin,ou=users,ou=people,ou=functest,dc=atlassian,dc=com)) to find the
groups that the user 'confadmin' belongs to. Obviously, the objectClass and member attributes may
differ in your install, but the filter should be similar.
2. connect to your LDAP/AD server with JXplorer or an LDAP tool of your choice, and issue the above
filter and check that you get the results you expect. This should help you to identify if and why the
filter is incorrect and what it should be. Please add what you find in this step to the support ticket if
you are unable to resolve it from here.
By 'admin account', we are referring to the account that was setup during the Confluence setup wizard.
If you have just integrated Confluence with LDAP or Active Directory, but find yourself not being able to
login with this account but instead get a 'not permitted' screen: here's the explanation and fix:
Explanation
This is caused by there being an account on LDAP with the same username as your admin account.
(so for example, your Confluence admin account is 'admin' and there's a user on LDAP that also has
username 'admin').
Fix
1. Shutdown Confluence
2. Open confluence/WEB-INF/classes/atlassian-user.xml in a text editor and comment out the LDAP
statements for now. For example:
<atlassian-user>
<repositories>
<!--
<ldap key="ldapRepository" name="LDAP Repository@hecate.atlassian.com" cache="true">
<host>hecate.atlassian.com</host>
<port>389</port>
<securityPrincipal>cn=admin,dc=atlassian,dc=private</
securityPrincipal>
<securityCredential>secret</securityCredential>
<securityProtocol>plain</securityProtocol>
<securityAuthentication>simple</securityAuthentication>
<baseContext>dc=atlassian,dc=private</baseContext>
<baseUserNamespace>dc=staff,dc=perftest,dc=atlassian,dc=private</
baseUserNamespace>
<baseGroupNamespace>dc=groups,dc=perftest,dc=atlassian,dc=private</
baseGroupNamespace>
<usernameAttribute>cn</usernameAttribute>
<userSearchFilter>(objectClass=inetorgperson)</userSearchFilter>
<firstnameAttribute>givenname</firstnameAttribute>
<surnameAttribute>sn</surnameAttribute>
<emailAttribute>mail</emailAttribute>
<groupnameAttribute>cn</groupnameAttribute>
<groupSearchFilter>(objectClass=groupOfNames)</groupSearchFilter>
<membershipAttribute>member</membershipAttribute>
</ldap>
-->
</repositories>
</atlassian-user>
Notice the <!-- and --> symbols added before and after the <ldap> tags.
3. Start up Confluence. You should now be able to login with your admin account
4. Create another admin account that has a different name to the one that exists in LDAP or Active
Directory.
5. Undo the changes you made to atlassian-user.xml and restart Confluence.
Alternatively, you can either rename or remove the admin account present on LDAP or Active Directory.
But if this is not an option, stick to the fix above.
There is currently no way to delegate user management from JIRA to Confluence. So, if you are in a
situation where your users are defined in Confluence and would like to take advantage of Confluence's
ability to use JIRA user management, you will need to transfer all of your existing Confluence users into
JIRA. You can do this manually, or if you have a large number of users, you can use the attached XML-
RPC script.
You should backup your JIRA installation before running this script. This is an experimental script
that has not gone through the same extensive testing as the Confluence and JIRA products.
A patched RPC plugin is included in the ZIP file to allow remote retrieval of a full list of users from
Confluence 2.0.x. To install it:
Things to note:
• This script requires that both the Confluence and JIRA remote APIs are available and accessible to
a username 'admin', password 'admin'. You can temporarily add this user to both system to run the
script, then remove it afterwards.
• A random password will be assigned to each user that is transferred because it is not possible to
access password information via the XML-RPC API. Therefore they will have retrieve a new password
via the password reminder.
• Jira does not allow users to sign up if they do not have a valid email address. Therefore we will
assign them an email address of type username@example.com to any Confluence users that do not
have a email address. This will allow you to find the users and help them to create a password or
change the email address.
• Ensure you have created a user 'admin' with password 'admin' in both Confluence and JIRA.
• Ensure both applications have remote API access enabled (see above).
• Ensure you have patched the Confluence RPC plugin if running Confluence 2.0.x.
If you're still having trouble, please raise a support request, and include a copy of the error you're
getting.
Please gather all of the information listed below and include it in your support request (http://
support.atlassian.com), even if you think you have a good idea what's causing the problem. That way we
don't have to ask for it later.
Confluence server
• Take a screenshot of Confluence's Administration # System Information (or save the page as
HTML)
• Take a screenshot of Confluence's Administration # Global Permissions, if you are having
problems with logging in
• Take a screenshot of the Space permissions page, if you are having problems with space or page
permissions.
If you are running Confluence 2.1 you will have to attach the following file instead of atlassian-user.xml
Please include LDAP Studio Entry Editor snaphots with the information specified on this page
Diagnostics
###
# Atlassian User
###
#log4j.logger.com.atlassian.user=DEBUG, confluencelog
#log4j.additivity.com.atlassian.user=false
#log4j.logger.com.atlassian.confluence.user=DEBUG,console
#log4j.additivity.com.atlassian.confluence.user=false
#log4j.logger.bucket.user=DEBUG,console
#log4j.additivity.bucket.user=false
To this:
###
# Atlassian User
###
• After enabling both the above, please attempt a Confluence LDAP account login and attach a copy of
the log files that are produced when the problem occurs. To do this, locate your install directory or
exploded WAR directory, then zip the full /logs subdirectory into a single file for us to examine. An
example location might be confluence-2.2.2-std/logs.
If you are using LDAP, run the External User Test tool and attach a copy of the output to the
support ticket.
From Confluence version 2.8 the 'External User Test' tool is integrated into the Administration Console,
and you can also run it outside of Confluence. In previous versions of Confluence, this tool was available
only as a separate utility called 'Paddle'.
• For Confluence 2.8 and later, please refer to Troubleshooting LDAP External User Management.
• If you are running an earlier version of Confluence, please refer to the Confluence 2.7
documentation or choose the relevant Confluence version from the list of previous versions on the
documentation home page.
Looking for help with your user management configuration? See Requesting External User
Management Support.
Try Atlassian Crowd for powerful user administration
Atlassian's Crowd is a web-based single sign-on (SSO) tool that simplifies application provisioning
and identity management, including LDAP integration. For more information, please see the Crowd
documentation on Integrating Crowd with Confluence.
On this page:
It's important to understand that these are separate components of the user management system. The
term LDAP integration is not really meaningful, because you could use LDAP repository for any or all of
the above tasks.
For example, in OSUser authentication can be performed against different repository to that used for
group membership queries. In AtlassianUser, authentication and group membership can be retrieved from
LDAP, but profile information is still stored in the Confluence database.
Authentication
Seraph
Almost all authentication in Confluence (and JIRA) is performed through Seraph, Atlasian's open source
web authentication framework. The goal of seraph is to provide a simple, extensible authentication
system that we can use on any application server.
Seraph is implemented as a servlet filter. Its sole job is, given a web request, to associate that
request with a particular user (or no user if the request is anonymous). It supports several methods
of authentication, including HTTP Basic Authentication, form-based authentication, and looking up
credentials already stored in the user's session.
Seraph performs no user management itself. It merely checks the credentials of the incoming request,
and delegates any user-management functions (looking up a user, checking a user's password is correct)
to Confluence's user-management subsystem.
If you were looking to integrate Confluence with a Single Sign-On (SSO) infrastructure, you would do so
by writing a custom Seraph authenticator (and in fact, many customers have done so).
Authentication for requests performed by the remote API do not go through Seraph, so they can't
take advantage of Seraph authenticators. XML-RPC and SOAP authentication requests are checked
directly against the user-management framework, and tokens are assigned directly by the remote API
subsystem.
By default, password authentication is delegated from Seraph to the user management system. This is
not necessary, however. Single Sign-On systems may have no password authentication at all, and get all
the necessary credentials from the SSO provider.
The rest of this document covers the user management frameworks used by Confluence: AtlassianUser
and OSUser.
AtlassianUser
AtlassianUser is a new user and group management framework developed by Atlassian, and is the core
framework used in Confluence since version 2.1. AtlassianUser was developed with the following goals in
mind:
• Support LDAP as a fully functional repository for authentication, group management and profile
information (profile information not yet implemented).
• Compatibility with both JIRA and Confluence (JIRA support not yet implemented).
• Be simple to configure.
AtlassianUser provides user, group and profile management services to Confluence. It does so by
delegating tasks to configurable repositories. Multiple repositories can be configured, so for example
Confluence can draw user information from both the database and an LDAP server.
Default Configuration
• Confluence's AtlassianUser configuration delegates all user, group, profile and password
authentication to OSUser.
AtlassianUser can store user, group and profile data directly in Confluence's database. This is the default
behaviour for Confluence 2.7.0 and later.
AtlassianUser currently supports password authentication, user management and group management
with an LDAP server. Follow the instructions on configuring AtlassianUser LDAP integration.
At this point, only read-only access to LDAP is planned. Java's JNDI-LDAP interface does not support
updating an LDAP repository, and the administration tools that come with LDAP servers such as Microsoft
Active Directory are generally comprehensive and already available in enterprise IT departments.
AtlassianUser will not support delegating Confluence user management to JIRA. Instead, our goal is
to implement AtlassianUser as the JIRA user management framework as well. Once this is done, both
Confluence and JIRA can use the same LDAP server for their authentication and group management.
OSUser
OpenSymphony User was Confluence's core user management framework until it was replaced by
AtlassianUser in version 2.1. OSUser is still supported through AtlassianUser's OSUser repositories.
OSUser is also built around the model of pluggable providers, but its LDAP support is limited.
In its default configuration, Confluence's OSUser providers store a list of users and groups together with
profile information in tables in the Confluence database:
• os_user (authentication)
• os_group (group membership)
• os_user_group (group membership)
• os_propertyentry (profile information)
The hashed password in the os_user table is used to authenticate the user unless LDAP support is
enabled. The os_user_group table is queried for group membership information.
OSUser only supports authentication against an LDAP server. That is, you can check user passwords
against LDAP, but all other user information must be shadowed in the Confluence database. Follow the
instructions on configuring OSUser LDAP authentication.
If you need support for LDAP user information or group membership as well, you should use
AtlassianUser instead (see above).
Confluence can use OSUser to retrieve information for authentication, group membership and profile
information from JIRA.
If you look at the discussion of OSUser's implementation above, you can see how this can works pretty
easily. A data source to JIRA database is configured in Confluence which lets Confluence read directly
from JIRA's os_* tables. For example, when a user is created in JIRA, the username and password goes
in the os_user table in the JIRA database. Confluence looks at the same table in the JIRA database to
authenticate the user.
Access to the JIRA database is read-only. For this reason, Confluence maintains a subset of the user's
profile information locally in the Confluence database (things like last login time and user preferences
that Confluence needs to be able to modify) .
Related pages
This page has been split into the LDAP FAQ and JIRA User Management FAQ.
On this page:
This file is a standard log4j configuration file, as described in the Apache log4j documentation.
• For Confluence Standalone, log entries are written to <confluence_install>/logs. The main log
file is called atlassian-confluence.log.
• For Confluence EAR/WAR, log entries are written to the application server logs, i.e. the default log
files of the application container.
For Confluence 2.7.x and later, both Standalone and EAR/WAR editions follow the same default
behaviour:
• When you start Confluence, log entries will be sent to the application server logs until Confluence
has completed its initial bootstrap. Any log entries written to the console will be repeated into the
<confluence-home> log described below.
• Once the initial startup sequence is complete, all logging will be to <confluence-home>/
logs/atlassian-confluence.log. For example: c:/confluence/data/logs/atlassian-
confluence.log.
Note that the default location is now the Confluence home directory instead of the application
server's log file.
To change the destination of the log files, you need to stop Confluence and then change the settings in
the 'Logging Location and Appender' section of the log4j.properties file. The location of this file is
described above.
In the standard properties file supplied with Confluence 2.7 and later, you will find entries for two
appenders:
• Edit the properties file – Your changes will take effect next time you start Confluence, and for all
subsequent sessions.
• Set the logging levels at runtime – Your changes will be in effect only until you next restart
Confluence.
Terminology: In log4j, a 'logger' is a named entity. Logger names are case-sensitive and they follow a
hierarchical naming standard. For example, the logger named com.foo is a parent of the logger named
com.foo.Bar.
To configure the logging levels and other settings on a permanent basis, you need to stop Confluence and
then change the settings in the log4j.properties file, described above.
The properties file contains a number of entries for different loggers that can be uncommented if you are
interested in logging from particular components. Read more in the Apache log4j documentation.
Below are some guidelines on specific configuration options you may find useful.
From Confluence 2.7, you can change some of Confluence's logging behaviour via the Administration
Console while Confluence is running. Any changes made in this way will apply only to the currently-
running Confluence lifetime. The changes are not written to the log4j.properties file and are therefore
discarded when you next stop Confluence.
Not all logging behaviour can be changed via the Administration Console. For logging configuration not
mentioned below, you will need to stop Confluence and then edit the logging properties file instead.
The 'Logging and Profiling' screen shows a list of all currently defined loggers. On this screen you can:
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'Logging and Profiling' in the 'Administration' section of
the left-hand panel.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
2. The 'Logging and Profiling' screen appears, as shown below. Use the following guidelines to change
the logging behaviour while Confluence is running:
• 'Performance Profiling' — See Page Request Profiling.
• 'SQL Logging' — Click the 'Enable SQL Logging' button to log the details of SQL requests made
to the database.
If you need to enable logging of SQL parameter values, you will need to change the setting
in the properties file. This option is not available via the Administration Console.
conditions.
° The 'Diagnostic' profile gives more information, useful for troubleshooting and debugging.
It results in slower performance and fills the log files more quickly.
• 'Add New Entry' — Type a class or package name into the text box and click the 'Add Entry'
button. The new logger will appear in the list of 'Existing Levels' in the lower part of the screen.
• 'Existing Levels' - These are the loggers currently in action for your Confluence instance.
° You can change the logging level by selecting a value from the 'New Level' dropdown list.
3. Click the 'Save' button to save any changes you have made in the 'Existing Levels' section.
You may want to increase Confluence's logging so that it records individual SQL requests sent to the
database. This is useful for troubleshooting specific problems.
You can configure the log to show which users are accessing which pages in Confluence. This can only be
done via the logging properties file – see the detailed instructions.
RELATED TOPICS
Logging Levels
• DEBUG - designates fine-grained informational events that are most useful to debug an application
(what is going on)
• INFO - announcements about the normal operation of the system - scheduled jobs running, services
starting and stopping, user-triggered processes and actions
• WARN - any condition that, while not an error in itself, may indicate that the system is running sub-
optimally
• ERROR - a condition that indicates something has gone wrong with the system
• FATAL - a condition that indicates something has gone wrong so badly that the system can not
recover
There are two ways to modify the logging levels, as described in Working with Confluence Logs.
The Configuration Guide contains instructions on installing and configuring Confluence. If you cannot find
what you are looking for, try the Search box in the top right-hand corner.
TOPICS
RELATED CONTENT
Documentation Home
Administrators Guide
Frequently Asked Questions
Confluence Community
Development Hub
Plugins and Extensions
This section describes how to enable secure access on a Confluence Standalone instance (running Tomcat
4.1.30). The configuration details may be slightly different for newer versions of Tomcat and different
application servers.
Before configuring SSL, an SSL certificate must be created. If you have already configured one, you can
skip this step.
Windows configuration
Unix/Linux configuration
Some questions will be asked, including a password for the certificate (the default is 'changeit'). Please
note down what this is, as it will be used in the next step.
In the confluence directory, open the conf/server.xml file and insert one of the following just after the
closing </Engine> tag:
Please note that the above configuration is included in the Confluence Standalone conf/server.xml file,
and only needs to be uncommented.
For more detailed information on setting up SSL with Tomcat (including additional configuration options),
have a look at Tomcat 4 SSL Howto or Tomcat 5.5 SSL Howto.
Before deploying the EAR/WAR version of Confluence in your choice of application server, please review
the setup notes and any known issues.
An excellent resource for Tomcat configuration is the official documentation. The pages below have some
specific Confluence-related configuration advice.
Another related resource is our guide to configuring Apache in front of Confluence, which includes
instructions on configuring mod_jk with Tomcat.
autoReconnect=true is required
The Confluence database connection URL must have autoReconnect=true added to the end to
prevent disconnection issues.
• Run bin/shutdown.sh or bin/shutdown.bat to bring Tomcat down while you are making these
changes
Configure Tomcat
The configuration is different for Conflence 2.2 onwards due to an upgrade to Tomcat 5.5
• If you are using the Standalone distribution. edit the conf/server.xml file in your Tomcat
installation. Users running their own Tomcat instance must edit the xml file where they declared the
Confluence Context descriptor.
• If editing conf/server.xml, find the following lines:
• Within the Context tags, directly after the opening <Context.../> line, insert the DataSource
Resource tag:
° Replace the username and password parameters with the correct values for your database
° In the url parameter, replace the word 'confluence' with the name of the database your
confluence data will be stored in.
° If you plan to use non-latin characters, you will also need to add
"&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8" on the end of the above URL. These options
are not required for any database other than MySQL.
• Directly after the <Logger.../> line, (before the next </Context> line), insert the following:
° You may want to choose different maxActive and maxIdle values: these are how many total
database connections will be allowed at one time, and how many will be kept open even when
there is no database activity
° Replace the username and password parameters with the correct values for your database
° In the url parameter, replace the word 'confluence' with the name of the database your
confluence data will be stored in.
° If you plan to use non-latin characters, you will also need to add
&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8 on the end of the above URL. These options are
not required for any database other than MySQL.
<resource-ref>
<description>Connection Pool</description>
<res-ref-name>jdbc/confluence</res-ref-name>
<res-type>javax.sql.Datasource</res-type>
<res-auth>Container</res-auth>
Configure Confluence
• If you are changing an existing Confluence installation over to using a Tomcat datasource
° Find your ConfluenceHome directory (see: Confluence Home Directory if you don't know where
it is).
° Edit the confluence.cfg.xml file
° Delete any line that contains a property that begins with hibernate.
° Insert the following at the start of the <properties> section.
<property name="hibernate.setup"><![CDATA[true]]></property>
<property name="hibernate.dialect"><!
[CDATA[net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect]]></property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.datasource"><![CDATA[java:comp/env/jdbc/
confluence]]></property>
Restart Confluence
F.A.Q.
I see "Can't call commit when autocommit=true" during an upgrade of Confluence or otherwise.
Example:
jdbc:mysql://localhost/confdb?autoReconnect=true&relaxAutoCommit=true
This JDBC url can be found in your confluence.cfg.xml file located in your confluence home folder.
By default, Tomcat uses ISO-8859-1 character encoding when decoding URLs received from a browser.
This can cause problems when Confluence's encoding is UTF-8, and you are using international characters
in attachment or page names.
1. Edit conf/server.xml and find the line where the Coyote HTTP Connector is defined. It will look
something like this, possibly with more parameters:
<Connector port="8080"/>
3. Restart Tomcat
You should apply the same URIEncoding parameter as above to the AJP connector if you are using
mod_jk, and add the following option to your Apache mod_jk configuration:
JkOptions +ForwardURICompatUnparsed
For comprehensive examples of how to use Tomcat and Apache with Confluence, see Running Confluence
behind Apache.
There is no maximum limit stipulated on a page size in Confluence. However, if a page larger then 2Mb is
created, an user can experience two problems:
Understandably, rendering of a large page is going to take excessive time. Don't try to put the entire
content of a book into one page, split it into pages/chapters.
It is easier to manage and fast to render too.
This error manifests that a page is far too large, larger then 2 MB.
Apache Tomcat 5, by default, sets the maximum size of acceptable HTTP POST request to 2MB.
You can reconfigure Tomcat to accept larger requests. This can be done by increasing the allowable limit
or just simply disabling this functionality.
The file you need to edit is <Tomcat-Dir>/server.xml. Set the Tomcat configuration parameter
maxPostSize for the HTTPConnector to a larger value (in bytes)
to increase the limit. Setting it to 0 will disable the size check.
maxPostSize - "The maximum size in bytes of the POST which will be handled by the container
FORM URL parameter parsing. The feature can be disabled by setting this attribute
to a value inferior or equal to 0. If not specified, this attribute is set to 2097152 (2
megabytes)."
This is because Confluence's HTTP sessions may contain objects which cannot be serialized to disk.
Tomcat tries to serialize existing sessions by default during shutdown.
You can add the following configuration parameter into Tomcat's server.xml file between the <Context>
tags to disable this:
Related topic
For more information regarding the saveOnRestart parameter, please refer to the Server Configuration
Reference for the Manager Component
By default Confluence's Tomcat instance listens on port 8080 for connections, and port 8005 for the
command to shut down.
in your logs, then you need to change the port number Confluence listens on (or you may be trying to
start Confluence twice).
Modify Tomcat conf/server.xml, change the ports used on the Server tag and HTTP Connector tag. If you
don't know what this means, see the example in the Standalone configuration below.
Edit conf/server.xml in your Confluence application directory, and change the ports on the Server tag and
the Connector tag to unused ports on your system. The following example shows the relevant section of
server.xml where they are changed to 8100 (Server) and 8180 (HTTP Connector). In this configuration
you would access Confluence on the URL: http://localhost:8180/confluence.
You can change the port number by editing the file <confluence install directory>/conf/
server.xml.
If you are running two Tomcat instances, you'll also need to change the shutdown port in the line:
Confluence does not make any use of the JBoss container beyond its embedded Tomcat web application
server, as can be easily demonstrated by the fact that our standalone Confluence ships with, and runs
entirely inside, Tomcat. In addition deploying Confluence inside JBoss can cause additional problems, as
described below.
While JBoss is a supported platform, and (subject to the limitations below) you can deploy Confluence
into it successfully, we recommend that unless there is some overriding reason to run JBoss - i.e. you are
making use of its specific management features, or you're already running several other JBoss servers
and want to keep your deployments consistent - you just run Confluence directly under Tomcat instead.
Atlassian do not currently support configuring Confluence on the same JBoss instance as an existing
Confluence or JIRA server.
Due to JBoss's inventive interpretation of the J2EE Classloader specification, multiple applications
deployed on the same JBoss instance can interfere with each other. The most common symptom of this
problem from the Confluence side is for a user to be unable to edit their profile (although it causes many
other seemingly random problems). As such, we do not recommend running Confluence on the same
JBoss instance as any other J2EE application.
Some customers have reported success having Confluence share a server with other Confluence or JIRA
instances by tweaking their classloader settings or server configurations. A number of recipes for doing
so are mentioned below in comments. We currently have not verified these configurations at Atlassian.
You're welcome to try them yourself, but if they do not work for you, we can not currently provide
support getting them to work.
On starting up Confluence under JBoss, you may see the following message logged to the console:
ERROR [lifecycle] The root log4j logger is set to DEBUG level. This may cause Confluence to run
slowly.
ERROR [lifecycle] If you are running Confluence under JBoss, please read http://
confluence.atlassian.com/x/PtAB
ERROR [lifecycle] To disable this error message, start Confluence with the system property -
Dconfluence.ignore.debug.logging=true
By default, JBoss ships with the root confluence logger set to DEBUG level. This means that Confluence
(and any other log4j-enabled application deployed in the JBoss server) will spend a lot of time generating
debugging information that will just end up wasting processor cycles and disk space.
To fix this problem, edit the conf/log4j.xml file in your JBoss server installation. Find the following
section:
<root>
<appender-ref ref="CONSOLE"/>
<appender-ref ref="FILE"/>
</root>
<root>
<priority value ="warn" />
This will raise the default log level to WARN, which is where Confluence is most comfortable running day-
to-day. Logging at INFO level should also be safe, but it will result in a lot more unnecessary information
being logged. We recommend you keep Confluence logging at WARN level unless something is going
wrong that you need to diagnose (or you're asked to log at a lower level by support).
The Confluence log4j.properties file includes some additional logging configuration, which is
overridden by JBoss's log4j.xml. To set logging to the same level as the standard Confluence
distribution, you should include the following in log4j.xml immediately above the root declaration you
edited above.
Putting this anywhere else in the file will probably break your JBoss logging configuration.
JBoss uses Apache Tomcat as its servlet engine. To support international characters in URLs it is not
sufficient to only configure JBoss to use an encoding such as UTF-8; you must also configure Tomcat to
process URLs using your selected encoding.
<jboss home>/server/default/deploy/jbossweb-tomcat55.sar/server.xml
Here is an example configuration for the HTTP connector listening on port 8080:
Note the URIEncoding attribute should be set to your desired character encoding.
If you are experiencing a problem with missing images when generating a PDF page export and following
error is found in the logs:
-Dorg.apache.catalina.STRICT_SERVLET_COMPLIANCE=false
Form sizes
Jetty limits form submission sizes to 200000 bytes by default. This can cause the following error to occur
when attempting to edit a large page in Confluence.
Resin 2 has a broken caching algorithm that for certain URLs will always return a 304 Not-Modified status
and return no content, even when the client does not send a Last-Modified header. This usually results in
broken stylesheets in Confluence.
To fix this disable caching in Resin by commenting out the following line in resin.conf:
As of Confluence 2.3 you can just need to update web.xml for Resin 3 with the shipped resin3 version of
web.xml.
Confluence is bundled with Xerces, which is an XSD-aware parser. Instructions on how to configure resin
to use Xerces can be found here. For more information, refer to the Spring Framework documentation
• You can't seem to stay logged in, and are continually asked to enter your username and password
• The Edit tab (or other links) only appear if you grant Anonymous users permission to perform those
functions
See also:
• CONF-1000
• CONF-1509
• CONF-1511
• CONF-3397
Resin 2 Users
Confluence has always run without modification on Resin 2.1.11 and later. These instructions only
apply to Resin 3.0
Resin and SOAP
If you want to use Confluence's SOAP interface under Resin, you will need to follow these
instructions as well: Confluence and SOAP on Resin
The Solution
Resin 3.0 does not correctly support the Servlet 2.3 specification. Confluence relies on this specification
to function. The workaround is to modify Confluence's web.xml file so that it is conformant with the
Servlet 2.4 specification. A big thankyou to Matthew Schmidt for supplying us with this workaround.
Premodified files
You can download one of the premodified web.xml files that are attached to this page. After downloading
rename to web.xml and place in the $confluenceWebapp/WEB-INF/ directory, overwriting the existing
web.xml in there. Don't forget to keep a backup!
Please only use the file with the exact version of Confluence you are using. An incorrect web.xml file can
cause strange problems. You can follow the instructions below to patch any other version.
First, you will need to change the XML preamble for the web.xml file. Servlet 2.3 validates against a DTD,
Servlet 2.4 validates against a schema. Also note that the <display-name> and <description> elements
have reversed orders.
Before:
<web-app>
<display-name>Confluence</display-name>
<description>Confluence Web App</description>
After:
Move down web.xml until you find the definition of the login filter-mapping. You need to change the
definitions of the login, security and sitemesh filters:
Before:
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>login</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>security</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>*.action</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>*.vm</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/display/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
After:
<filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>security</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>*.action</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>*.vm</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/display/*</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>
Confluence 2.0
In Confluence 2.0, you will need to add dispatcher tags to another of the sitemesh filter mappings:
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>sitemesh</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/label/*</url-pattern>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>
You will also need to find all the <display-name> servlet attributes and remove them as well. For
example:
Before
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dwr-invoker</servlet-name>
<display-name>DWR Servlet</display-name>
<servlet-class>uk.ltd.getahead.dwr.DWRServlet</servlet-class>
After
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dwr-invoker</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>uk.ltd.getahead.dwr.DWRServlet</servlet-class>
In addition to the Confluence 2.0 modifications you will also need to remove the Selenese servlet
and mappings:
<servlet>
<servlet-name>SeleneseServletSpike</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.thoughtworks.selenium.outbedded.CommandBridge</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>SeleneseServletSpike</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/selenium-driver/driver</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Otherwise you might get the following error when starting up resin:
com.caucho.config.LineConfigException: WEB-INF/web.xml:582:
`com.thoughtworks.selenium.outbedded.CommandBridge' is not a known servlet.
Servlets belong in the classpath, often in WEB-INF/classes.
Confluence 2.2
Done
Confluence should now run under Resin 3.0. Please report any other bugs as you find them.
Symptom
The WSDL generated by Confluence on the Resin application server is invalid. Attempting to parse it gives
you an error like this (using Axis as the client):
Cause
The default XML parser included with the Resin application server is incompatible with the Axis SOAP
library, and causes Axis to generate an invalid WSDL file. You can find information about this issue here:
• http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/AXIS-2235
Solution
The solution is to override Resin's default XML parser by placing the following within the <server> section
of resin.conf:
<system-property
javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory="org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl"/>
<system-property javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory="org.apache.xerces.jaxp.SAXParserFactoryImpl"/>
(You can also make this configuration per web-app by putting it in the <web-app> section. For more
information see this page: JAXP - specifying XML and XSLT implementations)
• http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-5953
In order to run Confluence under Resin 3, you will need to use a special version of web.xml. This has
been bundled in the main Confluence download as:
confluence/WEB-INF/web.resin3.xml
To enable it, simply remove the default confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml and then rename web.resin3.xml
to web.xml. Now restart.
For the complete list of supported application servers, please view this document.
SAP WebAS thinks that the Confluence responses are gzipped, which makes your setup page appear like
this:
You need to reconfigure the HTTP server part of WebAS to disable gzip output.
Enabling logging
Confluence sends its log output to standard out, so by default Weblogic does not record it. To
redirect Confluence's log output to a file follow these instructions Redirecting System.out and
System.err to a File
Confluence must be deployed as an exploded war file to WebLogic.
Otherwise you may experience errors as such:
In order to run Confluence under Weblogic 9.2, you will need to use a 2.4 servlet compatible version of
web.xml. This has been bundled in the main Confluence download as:
confluence/WEB-INF/web.servlet2-4.xml
To enable it, simply remove the default confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml and then rename
web.servlet2-4.xml to web.xml. Now restart.
If you are seeing the following error -- or other NoSuchMethodErrors -- then this tip is for you!
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.objectweb.asm.ClassVisitor.visit(ILjava/lang/String;Ljava/
lang/String;[Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/String;)V
It appears that WLS 9 ships with an incompatible version of org.objectweb.asm.* packages which
clash with the ones required by Hibernate. You can fix this by adding to the weblogic.xml deployment
descriptor the settings.
<container-descriptor>
<prefer-web-inf-classes>true</prefer-web-inf-classes>
</container-descriptor>
Creating a weblogic.xml file can improve the performance of Confluence within the WebLogic 8.1
series. This is particularly suitable in cases where WebLogic continually seeks to reload files from jars
- which can be noticed when profiling Confluence in WebLogic and encountering excessive calls to
java.util.zip.ZipFile.getEntry()
<jsp-descriptor>
<jsp-param>
<param-name>pageCheckSeconds</param-name>
<param-value>-1</param-value>
<jsp-param>
<param-name>precompile</param-name>
<param-value>false</param-value>
</jsp-param>
<jsp-param>
<param-name>workingDir</param-name>
<param-value>./jsp_precompile_dir/confluence</param-value>
</jsp-param>
</jsp-descriptor>
<container-descriptor>
<servlet-reload-check-secs>-1</servlet-reload-check-secs>
</container-descriptor>
<context-root>confluence</context-root>
</weblogic-web-app>
This file should be created in the WEB-INF/ directory of your Confluence deployment.
The full weblogic.xml syntax is described in BEA's documentation. Here we describe some important
parameters you should consider setting.
Performance can be considerably affected by Weblogic's tendency to scan JSPs for changes on every page
load.
This can be disabled by setting pageCheckSeconds to -1.
Similar to the JSP reload checks, Weblogic will scan servlets for modifications every second (by default),
hurting performance.
This can be prevented by setting the servlet-reload-check-secs element to -1.
If you Weblogic instance is often restarted, performance can be improved by explicitly setting a directory
to save compile JSPs to (the workingDir parameter), and setting precompile to 'false'.
Character Encoding
A JIRA user has reported that the following configuration can ensure that Chinese character sets are
displayed correctly - add the following entry to the weblogic.xml file.
<weblogic-web-app>
<jsp-descriptor>
<jsp-param>
<param-name>encoding</param-name>
<param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
</jsp-param>
<jsp-param>
<param-name>compilerSupportsEncoding</param-name>
<param-value>false</param-value>
</jsp-param>
</jsp-descriptor>
</weblogic-web-app>
Most of this page duplicates JIRA documentation - you might also like to read http://www.atlassian.com/
software/jira/docs/latest/servers/weblogic.html .
Confluence 2.0 uses oscache 2.1.1, which causes problems when Confluence is deployed in a weblogic
container. This problem will show up by the Confluence css file taking a very long time (upwards of
30mins) to load. To fix this, you will need to disable the oscache, by removing the following entry from
the WEB-INF/web.xml file.
<filter>
<filter-name>CacheFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>com.opensymphony.oscache.web.filter.CacheFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
If, after creating a custom template, you see no result, check your velocity.log for a statement similar to:
Axis 1.2 is known to not work out of the box with WebLogic 8.1. Please refer to the AXIS installation
instructions for details. The following excerpt was taken from the AXIS documentation.
WebLogic 8.1 ships with webservices.jar that conflicts with Axis' saaj.jar and prevents Axis
1.2 from working right out of the box. This conflict exists because WebLogic uses an older
definition of javax.xml.soap.* package from Java Web Services Developer Pack Version 1.0,
whereas Axis uses a newer revision from J2EE 1.4.
However, there are two alternative configuration changes that enable Axis based web services
to run on Weblogic 8.1.
In a script used to start WebLogic server, modify CLASSPATH property by placing Axis's saaj.jar
library in front of WebLogic's webservices.jar.
NOTE: This approach impacts all applications deployed on a particular WebLogic instance and
may prevent them from using WebLogic's webservices.
For more information on how WebLogic's class loader works, see WebLogic Server Application
Classloading.
There may be problems with WebLogic 8.1 and HTTP compression (by default disabled). This issue is
being investigated and tracked at CONF-6304
A customer has reported that it is not possible to redeploy Confluence when it has been set up against a
HSQL or embedded database. In general we do not recommend customers use the embedded database
on production systems. If you want the ability to redeploy Confluence (particulary if you have other
applications deployed in your weblogic server), you must use an external database in order for it to work.
Thanks to Eric Black for this tip.
Version Requirements
To run Confluence on Websphere, you will need to be running Confluence 1.4.2 or higher, against
Websphere 5.1.1 with fixpack 3 or higher installed (5.1.1.3 or higher). There are known issues running
Confluence against earlier versions of Websphere.
Confluence can not currently use Websphere datasources to access an Oracle database. This is because
in order to effectively store pages in the database, Confluence needs access to the raw Oracle connection
object, rather than the wrapper that Websphere places around it.
This is a known problem. For more information, please visit the issue in JIRA: (CONF-3580). The
workaround is to avoid using a Websphere datasource. Use Confluence's internal connection pool instead
— choose the "Direct JDBC Connection" option during setup).
Most Windows OS have a file path limit of 255 characters. When an application is deployed with a
long name, it is possible the deployed application files will reach this path limit. Currently, there
is no check performed and the error messages when trying to create such long files are not very
descriptive.
Example of installing Confluence on Windows XP Professional '02 sp 2. and Websphere App
Server v 6.0 produced by default this deployed location:
1) C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer/profiles/default\wstemp\92668751\workspace
\cells\bluetongueNode01Cell\applications\atlassian-confluence-2_2_8_war.ear\atlassian-
confluence-2_2_8_war.ear
2) atlassian-confluence-2_2_8.war\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\user\actions
\UserPickerAction$UsernameToUserTranslatingPaginationSupport
and consequently an error which is produced when attempted to run Confluence 1) + 2):
*Cause:*
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/user/actions/UserPickerAction
$UsernameToUserTranslatingPaginationSupport
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredConstructors0(Native Method)
Troubleshooting
I can not view any Confluence page with a space in the title
Please see Fix 'Page Not Found' errors for pages with spaces in the title.
Confluence allows you to specify which character encoding should be used for its requests. To use the
£ and € characters, you will need to use the "UTF-8" option. However, in some cases, WebSphere will
encode the characters using ISO-8859-1 before they get to Confluence. If you have set the Confluence
character encoding to "UTF-8" and are having problems, have a look at http://www-306.ibm.com/
software/globalization/j2ee/encoding.jsp for an explaination of WebSphere and Character encoding. In
particular, the -Dclient.encoding.override=UTF-8 system property allows you to override WebSpheres
defaults.
I get a 500 error when viewing pages that have a url with '~' character such as personal spaces and
profiles
If you are using siteminder along with Websphere then you may have the issue outlined by this
knowledge base entry.
Confluence supports the following application servers, provided they are running on a Windows, Unix
(NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solarix, Linux), Mac OS X on X86 or X86-64 processors.
Column labelled 'Works with' as opposed to 'Supported in': We assume that Confluence works fine
with these application server versions. But please be aware that we don't test these versions regularly
and that we may ask you to upgrade to a supported version before we can provide more detailed support.
For Confluence 2.8 and later, zOS, AIX and HPUX are not supported; neither are processors other than
X86. If you can get these application servers running on another operating system, we will try to help you
but may ask you to move to a supported operating system before we can provide more detailed support.
If you have no preference, we recommend using Confluence Standalone which includes Apache Tomcat.
• Macromedia JRun
• Apache Tomcat 6 — see reported issue
Installation
You need to start with a confluence.war file which has had the WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties
file modified to set confluence.home.
Specify a path to the confluence.war file on the local file system, and choose the context root which you
want to deploy confluence at (this is the context you'll access Confluence on, i.e: http://yourserver/
context_root). Click Next. (You just accept the default from here on)
On the 'Choose to generate default bindings and mappings' page, just click Next.
On 'Step 2' and 'Step 3', just click Next. On 'Step 4' click finish.
The installation will be performed. Click 'Save to Master Configuration', then click the Save button.
At this point you can make adjustments to the exploded version of Confluence which Websphere has
put in <WAS Install Dir>\AppServer\profiles\default\installedApps\<node id>\confluence_war.ear
\confluence.war. You can edit confluence-init.properties or add JDBC drivers to WEB-INF/lib -- just
remember that you'll need to do this again if you reinstall the application.
When that completes you'll be returned to the console. Click 'Enterprise Applications', check the
'confluence_war' checkbox and click the Start button.
You don't need to use 'parent last' classloading, the default 'parent_first' works, with the changes in the
position of jar files mentioned below.
Known Problems
RSS Generation Fails
The error:
To correct this, copy the files 'jdom-1.0.jar' and 'dom4j-1.4-full.jar' from Confluence's WEB-INF/lib
directory into your <appServerRoot>/lib directory (that is, the lib subdirectory of the directory named
AppServer in the default Websphere install)
For example, a personal space for the user häns generates a URL which Websphere doesn't correctly
interpret. We don't have a solution for this at the moment.
If you get that error message, it is because the path to a class file is longer than Windows can handle.
You need to rename your war file to a shorter name.
Application servers may have different settings for character encodings. We strongly suggest setting this
to UTF-8 where possible.
What is Confluence?
Confluence is an enterprise wiki that makes it easy for your team to collaborate and share
knowledge. A wiki is a web application that lets you edit web pages easily and immediately. No
waiting, just click, type, and click again.
1. Make sure that your system meets the minimum requirements to run Confluence:
• If you are installing Confluence for evaluation purposes, it should be pretty easy. You will need
a web browser — we recommend Firefox, or Internet Explorer 6 or later.
• For production installations, please read the detailed system requirements.
2. Please check the version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the documentation home
page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for older versions.
• Install Confluence onto your computer. The Confluence Installer makes this quick and easy if
you are installing the Standalone edition of Confluence. We provide detailed instructions for the
EAR/WAR edition as well.
• Provide initial setup information. The Setup Wizard will prompt you for the information needed
to get you up and running.
Choose the type of installation you'd like from the table below, and follow the link to the installation
instructions. When you have finished the installation phase, you will be prompted to start the setup
phase.
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
This page tells you what to do if you get errors like the following when starting Confluence Standalone,
and can't access Confluence on port 8080.
This means you are running other software on Tomcat's default port 8080. This may either be another
Tomcat or some other process.
To find out what process is listening on that port, load a command prompt and type: netstat -an
-a : Displays all active TCP connections and the TCP and UDP ports on which the computer is
listening.
-n : Displays active TCP connections, however, addresses and port numbers are expressed
numerically and no attempt is made to determine names.
There is also Process Explorer tool available to determine what is binding port 8080.
To change the ports for Confluence Standalone, open the file conf/server.xml under your Confluence
Installation directory. The first four lines of the file look like this:
You need to modify both the server port (default is 8005) and the connector port (default is 8080) to
ports that are free on your machine.
Hint: You can use netstat to identify free ports on your machine. See more information on using
netstat on Windows or on Linux.
For example, here are the first four lines of a modified server.xml file, using ports '8015' and '8090':
NOTES
[1] For more information on netstat, see using netstat on Windows, or netstat man page (Linux).
[2] JIRA Standalone also runs on port 8080 by default. If you're looking to change the port of JIRA
Standalone, see Changing JIRA Standalone's port.
RELATED PAGES
Overview
There are two methods of installing Confluence in a cluster, depending on whether you have existing
data. This page describes a fresh installation with no existing data.
1. Ensure you meet the clustering requirements, including obtaining a clustered license key from
Atlassian for each node
2. Install Confluence on a single node, configuring an external database and a cluster name
3. Load test the single node installation, see whether clustering is required
4. Shut down the first node, copy the Confluence application and Confluence home directory to the
second node
5. Start the first node, wait until it is running, then bring up the second node and it will automatically
join the cluster
6. Test the cluster is working correctly
7. Configure a load balancer in front of the two clustered nodes.
1. Clustering requirements
Your Confluence cluster installation must meet all the following criteria for clustering:
A cluster can run using two copies of Confluence Standalone. However, cluster administrators must
understand how to configure an application server and web server with load balancing, so we recommend
you are comfortable installing Confluence as a EAR/WAR in your application server before proceeding with
a clustered installation.
Cluster administrators should already be comfortable with the normal installation method, so it won't be
repeated here. There are two differences in the Confluence Setup Wizard from a normal installation:
Technical note
Most Confluence installations do not need to be clustered. Ensure you have tested your single node
installation with the number of users you expect to host before going ahead with the additional
complexity of clustering.
Check out our performance tuning tips for ways to improve the performance of a single instance of
Confluence.
You can upgrade your single node to a multi-node cluster at any time by resuming this guide from step 4
below.
Confluence clusters must use the same JDK, application server and application. The easiest way to ensure
this is to shut down Confluence on the first node, then copy its web application and home directory to the
second node:
Copying the web application ensures any modifications you have made to the application itself, custom
LDAP settings (atlassian-user.xml), and any other advanced configuration are copied to node #2.
Copying the home directory ensures the Confluence search index (the index/ directory), the database
and cluster configuration (confluence.cfg.xml), and any other home directory settings are copied to
node #2.
5. Start Confluence on the first node, wait, then start Confluence on second node
For the most stable start-up process, it is important to start Confluence one server at a time.
The Cluster Administration page (Administration, Cluster Configuration) includes information about the
active cluster. When the cluster is running properly, this page displays:
For the moment, configuring the load balancer is outside the scope of this document.
However, a simple Apache and Tomcat load-balancing configuration is available, which includes sample
configuration for the Apache Tomcat and the Apache web server, using its load-balancing JK connector.
Troubleshooting
If you have problems with the above procedure, please see our Cluster Troubleshooting guide.
Upgrading a cluster
It is important that upgrades follow the procedure for Upgrading a Confluence Cluster.
Related documentation
Overview
The following is a description of how to setup a Confluence Cluster on a Windows machine using Apache
and mod_jk to handle the loadbalancing.
1. Download and install one copy of Apache httpd. Do not install Apache as a service, but set it to
listen on port 8080. (Tested with Apache httpd 2.0.55.)
2. Download the latest version of mod_jk. Copy this file into the Apache modules/ directory and
rename it to mod_jk.so. (Tested with JK-1.2.19.)
3. Download and extract one copy of the ZIP distribution of Apache Tomcat. (Tested with Tomcat 5.5.)
4. Download JDBC drivers for the external database you will be using. Put the drivers in Tomcat's
common/lib/ directory. (Tested with Postgresql 8.1, postgresql-8.1-404.jdbc3.jar).
Apache configuration
JkWorkersFile conf/workers.properties
JkLogFile logs/mod_jk.log
JkLogLevel info
Create a workers.properties file in the Apache conf/ directory. This version of the workers.properties file is
configured to use 2 Tomcat instances: tomcat1 and tomcat2.
worker.list=loadbalancer
worker.tomcat1.port=18081
worker.tomcat1.host=localhost
worker.tomcat1.type=ajp13
worker.tomcat1.lbfactor=1
worker.tomcat2.port=28081
worker.tomcat2.host=localhost
worker.tomcat2.type=ajp13
worker.tomcat2.lbfactor=1
worker.loadbalancer.type=lb
worker.loadbalancer.balanced_workers=tomcat1, tomcat2
Tomcat configuration
The Tomcat configuration below will run multiple instances from the same binaries in the main Tomcat
directory. For complete documentation of this configuration, see the RUNNING.txt file in the Tomcat
distribution.
Create a directory for each instance of Tomcat, somewhere outside where you installed Tomcat. For
example, if you extracted Tomcat to /opt/apache/tomcat-5.5, your instances could be in /var/tomcat-
instances/tomcat1, /var/tomcat-instances/tomcat2. These folders will be referred to as the instance home
directories.
Copy the following folders from the Tomcat installation directory into each instance home directory. Some
of the folders may be empty, but copy them anyway.
• conf
• logs
• shared
• webapps
Edit conf/server.xml in the instance home directories to include the Confluence application and have
distinct listen ports for Server, HTTP Connector and AJP13 Connector. All nodes can use the same
Confluence webapp as long as you set confluence.home via a system property (see startup scripts
below).
To use these sample config files, you will need to edit them to set the Confluence web-app location and
the data source configuration.
The startup scripts for each instance must set the CATALINA_BASE environment variable and
confluence.home system property. The variables in the sample scripts below should reference:
tomcat1/startup.bat:
set CATALINA_HOME=C:\home\mryall\opt\apache\apache-tomcat-5.5.16
set CATALINA_BASE=C:\home\mryall\var\tomcat-instances\tomcat1
set JRE_HOME=C:\Java\jre1.5.0_06
set JAVA_OPTS=-Dconfluence.home=C:\home\mryall\data\confluence\cluster\tomcat1 -Xmx512m
tomcat2/startup.bat:
set CATALINA_HOME=C:\home\mryall\opt\apache\apache-tomcat-5.5.16
set CATALINA_BASE=C:\home\mryall\var\tomcat-instances\tomcat2
set JRE_HOME=C:\Java\jre1.5.0_06
set JAVA_OPTS=-Dconfluence.home=C:\home\mryall\data\confluence\cluster\tomcat2 -Xmx512m
%CATALINA_HOME%\bin\startup.bat
Follow the Confluence Cluster Installation procedure with the steps following the app server setup.
Troubleshooting
General advice
The above tomcat configurations enable HTTP connectors on each Tomcat instance so that you can
connect to the nodes individually. To check whether the load balancer (Apache & mod_jk) is causing the
problem, try connecting to the individual Tomcat instances. Please note that you should not allow users
to directly access individual nodes in production mode: You don't want people to bookmark nodes since
the node details might change, or single nodes may be taken out of the cluster for maintenance while the
cluster itself is still available.
Ensure the name you use for your worker in workers.properties (e.g. tomcat1) matches the jvmRoute
attribute of the engine tag in your Tomcat server.xml. For an example, search for 'Engine' in the attached
sample config.
References
General
http://raibledesigns.com/tomcat/
http://httpd.apache.org/
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.0-doc/cluster-howto.html
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.0-doc/balancer-howto.html
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-3.3-doc/mod_jk-howto.html
Clustering and Load Balancing in Tomcat 5, Part 1
Clustering and Load Balancing in Tomcat 5, Part 2
Overview
There are two methods of installing Confluence in a cluster, depending on whether you have existing
data. This page describes how to upgrade an existing Confluence instance into a cluster.
To upgrade an existing copy of Confluence to run in a two-node cluster, you must do the following:
1. Ensure that your standalone version of Confluence has been upgraded to the version you want to
run the Cluster on. Do not upgrade your version of Confluence and switch to the clustered version
at the same time. First upgrade your system (e.g. from Confluence 2.5.8 Standalone to 2.7.1
Standalone) and make sure everything works fine (e.g. for a week) before switching (e.g. from
Confluence 2.7.1 Standalone to 2.7.1 Clustered)
2. Ensure you meet the clustering requirements, including obtaining a clustered license key from
Atlassian for each node
3. Upgrade the existing Confluence instance to a clustered license
4. Enable clustering and select a cluster name
5. Shut down the first node, copy the Confluence application and Confluence home directory to the
second node
6. Start the first node, wait until it is running, then bring up the second node and it will automatically
join the cluster
7. Test the cluster is working correctly
8. Configure a load balancer in front of the two clustered nodes.
1. Clustering requirements
Your Confluence cluster installation must meet all the following criteria for clustering:
A cluster can run using two copies of Confluence Standalone. However, cluster administrators must
understand how to configure an application server and web server with load balancing, so we recommend
you are comfortable installing Confluence as a EAR/WAR in your application server before proceeding with
a clustered installation.
Once you've obtained your clustered license from Atlassian, you can simply update the license in your
running Confluence instance:
1. Go to 'Administration'.
2. Go to 'License Details', and paste in the new license.
3. Click 'Save'.
When you enter a clustered license, you will see a new line appear on this page: Licensed Clustered
Nodes. This tells you how many nodes your Confluence license will allow.
When you change Confluence to use a cluster license, a new menu option will be revealed on the left:
Cluster Configuration. Open this menu item to configure your cluster.
On this page, you need to enter a name for your cluster, and possibly select which network interface on
your server will be used for the cluster (only if you have more than one suitable interface).
Clicking 'Start cluster' will migrate your attachments to the database, then prevent any access to
Confluence until it is restarted.
Technical note
The cluster name will be converted into a unique multicast IP address and port for your Confluence
cluster. UDP multicast traffic is used for Confluence to automatically discover other nodes in the
cluster when they start up.
For the remaining steps in setting up a cluster with existing data, please continue from step 4 in the
normal Confluence cluster installation guide.
5. Start Confluence on the first node, wait, then start Confluence on second node
Troubleshooting
If you have problems with the above procedure, please see our Cluster Troubleshooting guide.
Upgrading a cluster
It is important that upgrades follow the procedure for Upgrading a Confluence Cluster.
Related documentation
Overview
We highly recommend that you backup your Confluence home and install directories and your
database before proceeding.
• Always check the release-notes for the version of Confluence you are installing for upgrade
instructions specific to that version.
• To perform this upgrade you must be familiar with the usage of the application server running your
Confluence Cluster, and the web server load balancing it.
• Check the Configuration Guide for your application server and database, to make sure there isn't
anything extra you need to do to get Confluence running.
• Check that you know what configurations or customisations have been made to your Confluence
instance. These may include specialised user management configurations and changes to
Confluence's Java classes and Velocity templates.
It is vital that all nodes in the cluster are running the same version of Confluence. That's why the
first step is to stop all the nodes.
Stop the Confluence application on each node using your application server.
We advise configuring your load balancing web server to redirect traffic away from Confluence until
the upgrade is complete on multiple nodes.
Upgrading a cluster node uses the same process as "Method One" on Upgrading Confluence.
Copy the confluence installation, complete with customisations, to the next node.
Troubleshooting
Related documentation
On Unix-based operating systems, the Java runtime makes use of certain parts of the platform's native
X11 graphics libraries. The X Server does not have to be running, but the libraries must be available on
the server. Confluence will run on a server that does not have Xlib installed, but parts of the application
that manipulate graphics: PDF exports, image thumbnailing, the image gallery macro, CAPTCHA, and the
resizing of profile pictures, will fail.
Mac OS X
You do not need to install X11 on Mac OS X, as it has its own graphics libraries.
If X11 is not present, you may see any of the following errors
• "This Confluence installation can not generate thumbnails: no image support in Java runtime"
• "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.2_09/jre/lib/i386/
libawt.so: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" when exporting a
PDF
• "NoClassDefFoundError" when uploading a profile picture
On Fedora Core, you will need to install the xorg-x11-deprecated-libs package. (https://
bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=130239)
• libXp
• libXp-devel (if you wish to compile against this library)
Debian Linux
You'll only need the xlibs-dbg package if you're running an older version of Debian (3.0). It's a
dummy package for smoothing the transition to a new set of graphics libraries, so if you can't locate
it, you most likely don't need it.
Gentoo Linux
Solaris 10
Ubuntu
> sudo apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxt6 libxt6-dbg libxext6 libxtst-dev
libxtst6 xlibs-dbg xlibs-dev
Note: 'sudo' enables you to be superuser for one operation. You will need to supply your user password.
If you install Confluence 'out of the box' and encounter the error below, consider your location's way of
calculating the current date.
It's possible to encounter this if your current country's way of reading timestamps differs from the norm.
For example, one of our users encountered this problem in Thailand, which worked out the current year
(2005) to be 2548.
Simply change the operating system's calculation of the date to resemble "the norm" - i.e., European
style calculation - and start your application server again.
Below are the results of a survey conducted by Atlassian in July 2007, showing some capacity statistics
for Confluence users. The figures are broken down by industry and number of users.
Num Users Length of Database Application Num CPUs/ Physical Operating Satifaction
time in Server Cores Memory/ System with
production RAM Confluence
Performance
Banking/
Finance
26 - 50 3-6 Months Microsoft Standalone/ 2 2G Windows Neutral
Ago SQL Server Apache
Tomcat
26 - 50 2 Years Ago Sybase ASE Weblogic >8 >16G Unix Satsfied
51 - 250 3-6 Months Oracle Standalone/ 2 4G Unix Neutral
Ago Apache
Tomcat
501 - 1,000 3-6 Months Microsoft Websphere 2 2G AIX Satsfied
Ago SQL Server
1,001 - 3-6 Months Oracle Standalone/ 2 4G Windows Satsfied
5,000 Ago Apache
Tomcat
1,001 - 2 Years Ago Oracle Websphere 4 >16G Solaris Extremely
5,000 Satisfied
5,001 - 10-12 Microsoft Standalone/ 4 16G Linux Satsfied
10,000 Months Ago SQL Server Apache
Tomcat
Education
1-25 2 Years Ago DB2 Standalone/ 2 2G Linux Satsfied
Apache
Tomcat
26 - 50 10-12 MySQL Standalone/ 2 2G Linux Extremely
Months Ago Apache Satisfied
Tomcat
51 - 250 <3 Months Oracle Standalone/ 1G Windows Unsatisfied
Ago Apache
Tomcat
51 - 250 10-12 Oracle Standalone/ 1 2G Unix Extremely
Months Ago Apache Satisfied
Tomcat
Engineering/
Aerospace
251 - 500 7-9 Months Oracle Standalone/ 1 1G Mac OS X Satsfied
Ago Apache
Tomcat
1,001 - 7-9 Months Microsoft JBoss 2 4G Linux Satsfied
5,000 Ago SQL Server
Entertainment
1,001 - 10-12 PostgreSQL Standalone/ 2 8G Linux Extremely
5,000 Months Ago Apache Satisfied
Tomcat
Government
51 - 250 2 Years Ago MySQL Standalone/ 2 2G Mac OS X Extremely
Apache Satisfied
Tomcat
Technology
501 - 1,000 7-9 Months MySQL Standalone/ 1 2G Linux Satsfied
Ago Apache
Tomcat
Telecommunications
& Media
• New users can get a free multi-user Evaluation licence or two-user Personal licence immediately
• For enterprise, non-profit, open source and educational licences, see Confluence Licencing and
Pricing
• Existing users can retrieve their key from the Licence Viewer
• If you can't find your key or are having problems, contact sales@atlassian.com
• The Standalone edition of Confluence. The Standalone edition includes Apache Tomcat as the
standalone application server. If you want to install an EAR/WAR edition for deployment on
your own existing application server, please refer to the Confluence Installation Guide.
• Windows or Mac OS X systems. If you are installing Confluence on a Unix-based system,
please refer to Installing Confluence Standalone on Unix.
• The automatic Confluence Installer. If you want to install Confluence from a downloaded zip
file, please refer to Installing Confluence Standalone on Windows from Zip File or Installing
Confluence Standalone on a Mac from Zip File.
Also, please check the version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the documentation
home page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for older versions.
Hint: If you are evaluating Confluence or you are unsure which version to install, this is the one for
you. Just follow the instructions below.
On this page:
1. Make sure that your system meets the minimum requirements to run Confluence:
• If you are installing Confluence for evaluation purposes, it should be pretty easy. You will need
a web browser — we recommend Firefox, or Internet Explorer 6 or later.
• For production installations, please read the detailed system requirements.
2. Have your Confluence license key ready. You can obtain a trial, free or commercial license now, or
retrieve your existing license key.
The installation wizard will perform some preparation, then the Confluence Installer will display a
welcome screen, something like this:
Screenshot: The Confluence Installer's Welcome Screen
1. Choose where you would like Confluence to be installed. If the directory you choose does not yet
exist, the installer will create it for you. Do one of the following:
• Leave the default value supplied for the 'Destination directory'.
• Or click the 'Browse' button and choose another location on your computer.
2. Click 'Next'.
The Confluence Home directory is the folder where Confluence stores its configuration information, search
indexes and page attachments. If you're using the embedded HSQLDB database supplied for evaluation
purposes, the database files are also stored in this directory. You can also read about the contents of the
Home directory. The Confluence Home directory is different from the Confluence Installation Directory.
1. Choose where you would like Confluence to store its configuration data. If the directory you choose
does not yet exist, the installer will create it for you. Do one of the following:
• Leave the default value supplied for the location of the Home directory.
• Or click the 'Browse' button and choose another location on your computer.
2. Click 'Next'.
1. Enter an alternative 'HTTP Port Number', such as '8090'. This port forms part of the URL you will use
to access Confluence in a web browser. By default, Confluence listens on port 8080. In that case,
you might use the following address to access Confluence: http://localhost:8080/.
2. Enter an alternative 'Control Port Number', such as '8015'. This port is used to start up and shut
down Confluence, via the RMI (Remote Method Invocation). By default, Confluence uses port 8005.
3. Click 'Next'.
You can read more information, for non-Windows users too, on starting Confluence automatically on
system startup.
1. Put a tick in the checkbox next to 'Run as service' if you would like Confluence to start up
automatically each time you start your computer. This is the default option.
2. Click 'Next'.
The Confluence installer now has enough information. It will start extracting the files from the file you
have downloaded, and copying them onto your computer.
This may take a few minutes. When it has finished, you will see the 'Start Confluence in browser' screen
as shown below.
For Windows users: The installer has added an entry into your Windows Start Menu, called 'Atlassian
Confluence'. You will also find an uninstaller and some functions for managing Confluence as a Windows
service.
RELATED TOPICS
Documentation Home
• The Standalone edition of Confluence. The Standalone edition includes Apache Tomcat as the
standalone application server. If you want to install an EAR/WAR edition for deployment on
your own existing application server, please refer to the Confluence Installation Guide.
• Mac OS X systems. For other operating systems please refer to the Confluence Installation
Guide.
• Installation via a zipped download file. For a simpler installation procedure, please consider the
Confluence Installer.
Also, please check the version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the documentation
home page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for older versions.
On this page:
1. Make sure that your system meets the minimum requirements to run Confluence:
• If you are installing Confluence for evaluation purposes, it should be pretty easy. You will need
a web browser — we recommend Firefox, or Internet Explorer 6 or later.
• For production installations, please read the detailed system requirements.
2. Have your Confluence license key ready. You can obtain a trial, free or commercial license now, or
retrieve your existing license key.
3. You must be able to use a command prompt and install Java to continue. If not, please contact your
system administrator to assist you or consider the Hosted online evaluation option.
4. We recommend that you run Software Update to ensure that your operating system is up to date.
1. If you are not sure whether you have JDK installed correctly, please confirm by doing the following:
• Open a command prompt.
° On Windows: Open your 'Start' menu and select 'Run', then type cmd and click 'OK'.
• Type the following in the command prompt and then press Enter:
° On Windows: echo %JAVA_HOME%
° On Unix: echo $JAVA_HOME
the letters just before the final numbers are 'jdk'. If you see those letters, the JDK is
installed.
° If nothing is displayed, or you do not see 'jdk' plus some numbers, the JDK is not
installed.
2. If you have installed a non-Sun JDK, you need to install the Sun JSSE package now.
3. If you need to install the JDK, follow these instructions:
• Go to the Java Sun download page.
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
1. Open your Confluence Installation directory (created when you unzipped Confluence — see above).
2. Under the Installation directory, find this file: \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\confluence-
init.properties
3. Open the confluence-init.properties file in a text editor such as Textedit.
4. Scroll to the bottom and find this line:
# confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
5. Remove the '#' and the space at the beginning of this line, so that Confluence no longer regards the
line as a comment. The line should now begin with confluence.home
6. Change the Confluence Home directory to the Confluence Home directory you have just created:
• Place the cursor after the '=' sign.
confluence.home=/Users/jsmith/confluence-data
By default, Confluence listens on port '8080'. If this port is already in use in your installation, follow these
instructions to change the ports:
• To change the ports for Confluence Standalone, open the file conf/server.xml under your
Confluence Installation directory. The first four lines of the file look like this:
You need to modify both the server port (default is 8005) and the connector port (default is 8080)
to ports that are free on your machine.
Hint: You can use netstat to identify free ports on your machine. See more information on using
netstat on Windows or on Linux.
For example, here are the first four lines of a modified server.xml file, using ports '8015' and
'8090':
6. Start Confluence
1. Go to your Confluence Installation directory (created when you unzipped Confluence — see above).
2. Open the bin folder and run OS X - Run Confluence In Background.
3. Once Confluence is running, open a web browser and visit http://localhost:8080/.
Hint: If you changed the port earlier, use the port you specified in step 5 above.
If the web browser shows an error instead of the Setup Wizard, check the Troubleshooting section.
RELATED TOPICS
• The Standalone edition of Confluence. The Standalone edition includes Apache Tomcat as the
standalone application server. If you want to install an EAR/WAR edition for deployment on
your own existing application server, please refer to the Confluence Installation Guide.
• Unix, Linux or Solaris systems. If you are installing Confluence on a Windows or Mac OS X
system, please refer to Installing Confluence Standalone.
Also, please check the version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the documentation
home page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for older versions.
Hint: If you are evaluating Confluence on Unix or you are unsure which version to install, this is the
one for you. Just follow the instructions below.
On this page:
1. Make sure that your system meets the minimum requirements to run Confluence:
• If you are installing Confluence for evaluation purposes, it should be pretty easy. You will need
a web browser — we recommend Firefox, or Internet Explorer 6 or later.
• For production installations, please read the detailed system requirements.
2. Have your Confluence license key ready. You can obtain a trial, free or commercial license now, or
retrieve your existing license key.
3. You must be able to use a command prompt and install Java to continue. If not, please contact your
system administrator to assist you or consider the Hosted online evaluation option.
1. If you are not sure whether you have JDK installed correctly, please confirm by doing the following:
• Open a command prompt.
° On Windows: Open your 'Start' menu and select 'Run', then type cmd and click 'OK'.
• Type the following in the command prompt and then press Enter:
° On Windows: echo %JAVA_HOME%
° On Unix: echo $JAVA_HOME
the letters just before the final numbers are 'jdk'. If you see those letters, the JDK is
installed.
° If nothing is displayed, or you do not see 'jdk' plus some numbers, the JDK is not
installed.
2. If you have installed a non-Sun JDK, you need to install the Sun JSSE package now.
3. If you need to install the JDK, follow these instructions:
• Go to the Java Sun download page.
Mac OS X
You do not need to install X11 on Mac OS X, as it has its own graphics libraries.
If X11 is not present, you may see any of the following errors
• "This Confluence installation can not generate thumbnails: no image support in Java runtime"
• "Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/local/j2sdk1.4.2_09/jre/lib/i386/
libawt.so: libXp.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" when exporting a
PDF
• "NoClassDefFoundError" when uploading a profile picture
On Fedora Core, you will need to install the xorg-x11-deprecated-libs package. (https://
bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=130239)
• libXp
• libXp-devel (if you wish to compile against this library)
Debian Linux
You'll only need the xlibs-dbg package if you're running an older version of Debian (3.0). It's a
dummy package for smoothing the transition to a new set of graphics libraries, so if you can't locate
it, you most likely don't need it.
Gentoo Linux
Solaris 10
> sudo apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxt6 libxt6-dbg libxext6 libxtst-dev
libxtst6 xlibs-dbg xlibs-dev
Note: 'sudo' enables you to be superuser for one operation. You will need to supply your user password.
The directory into which you unzipped the Confluence installation is called the Confluence Installation
directory. Next you will define the Confluence Home directory.
1. Open your Confluence Installation directory (created when you unzipped Confluence — see above).
2. Under the Installation directory, find this file: \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\confluence-
init.properties
3. Open the confluence-init.properties file in a text editor.
4. Scroll to the bottom and find this line:
# confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
5. Remove the '#' and the space at the beginning of this line, so that Confluence no longer regards the
line as a comment. The line should now begin with confluence.home
6. If you decide to change the Confluence Home directory from the default, use an absolute path
rather than a symbolic link to specify the path and file name. For example:
confluence.home=/home/jsmith/confluence-data/confluence-2.7.0-std/
By default, Confluence listens on port '8080'. If this port is already in use in your installation, follow these
instructions to change the ports:
You need to modify both the server port (default is 8005) and the connector port (default is 8080)
to ports that are free on your machine.
Hint: You can use netstat to identify free ports on your machine. See more information on using
netstat on Windows or on Linux.
For example, here are the first four lines of a modified server.xml file, using ports '8015' and
'8090':
7. Start Confluence
1. Go to your Confluence Installation directory (created when you unzipped Confluence — see above).
2. Under your Confluence Installation directory, open the bin directory and run the startup script:
startup.sh.
3. Once Confluence is running, open a web browser and visit http://localhost:8080/.
Hint: If you changed the port earlier, use the port you specified in step 6 above.
If the web browser shows an error instead of the Setup Wizard, check the Troubleshooting section.
RELATED TOPICS
• The Standalone edition of Confluence. The Standalone edition includes Apache Tomcat as the
standalone application server. If you want to install an EAR/WAR edition for deployment on
your own existing application server, please refer to the Confluence Installation Guide.
• Windows systems. For other operating systems please refer to the Confluence Installation
Guide.
• Installation via a zipped download file. For a simpler installation procedure, please consider the
Confluence Installer.
Also, please check the version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the documentation
home page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for older versions.
On this page:
1. Make sure that your system meets the minimum requirements to run Confluence:
• If you are installing Confluence for evaluation purposes, it should be pretty easy. You will need
a web browser — we recommend Firefox, or Internet Explorer 6 or later.
• For production installations, please read the detailed system requirements.
2. Have your Confluence license key ready. You can obtain a trial, free or commercial license now, or
retrieve your existing license key.
3. You must be able to use a command prompt and install Java to continue. If not, please contact your
system administrator to assist you or consider the Hosted online evaluation option.
1. If you are not sure whether you have JDK installed correctly, please confirm by doing the following:
• Open a command prompt.
° On Windows: Open your 'Start' menu and select 'Run', then type cmd and click 'OK'.
• Type the following in the command prompt and then press Enter:
° On Windows: echo %JAVA_HOME%
° On Unix: echo $JAVA_HOME
the letters just before the final numbers are 'jdk'. If you see those letters, the JDK is
installed.
° If nothing is displayed, or you do not see 'jdk' plus some numbers, the JDK is not
installed.
2. If you have installed a non-Sun JDK, you need to install the Sun JSSE package now.
3. If you need to install the JDK, follow these instructions:
• Go to the Java Sun download page.
• Download the version entitled 'JDK 6 Update XX', where 'XX' stands for some number. (Sun will
provide the latest version on that page.)
The directory into which you unzipped the Confluence installation is called the Confluence Installation
directory. Next you will define the Confluence Home directory.
1. Open your Confluence Installation directory (created when you unzipped Confluence — see above).
2. Under the Installation directory, find this file: \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\confluence-
init.properties
3. Open the confluence-init.properties file in a text editor such as Notepad.
4. Scroll to the bottom and find this line:
# confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
5. Remove the '#' and the space at the beginning of this line, so that Confluence no longer regards the
line as a comment. The line should now begin with confluence.home
6. If you decide to change the Confluence Home directory from the default, please note the following:
• Avoid spaces in the directory path or file name.
• Use forward slashes '/' to define the path.
For example:
confluence.home=c:/data/confluence-home
• To change the ports for Confluence Standalone, open the file conf/server.xml under your
Confluence Installation directory. The first four lines of the file look like this:
You need to modify both the server port (default is 8005) and the connector port (default is 8080)
to ports that are free on your machine.
Hint: You can use netstat to identify free ports on your machine. See more information on using
netstat on Windows or on Linux.
For example, here are the first four lines of a modified server.xml file, using ports '8015' and
'8090':
6. Start Confluence
1. Go to your Confluence Installation directory (created when you unzipped Confluence — see above).
2. Under your Confluence Installation directory, open the bin directory and run the startup script:
startup.bat.
Troubleshooting
If the window closes immediately when started, this means that an error is preventing
Confluence from starting. To view this error:
a. Open a command prompt: Click on your 'Start' menu, then click 'Run'. In the Run box,
type cmd and click 'OK'.
b. From the command prompt, go to your Confluence Installation directory.
c. Go into the bin subdirectory.
d. Run catalina.bat run.
Note: You should not run startup.bat at this point, because that would still produce a
popup window that would close straight away.
e. Read the error message.
f. Find the solution to that error in the Troubleshooting section.
3. Once Confluence is running, open a web browser and visit http://localhost:8080/.
Hint: If you changed the port earlier, use the port you specified in step 5 above.
RELATED TOPICS
About Java
1. If you are not sure whether you have JDK installed correctly, please confirm by doing the following:
• Open a command prompt.
° On Windows: Open your 'Start' menu and select 'Run', then type cmd and click 'OK'.
• Type the following in the command prompt and then press Enter:
° On Windows: echo %JAVA_HOME%
° On Unix: echo $JAVA_HOME
the letters just before the final numbers are 'jdk'. If you see those letters, the JDK is
installed.
° If nothing is displayed, or you do not see 'jdk' plus some numbers, the JDK is not
installed.
2. If you have installed a non-Sun JDK, you need to install the Sun JSSE package now.
3. If you need to install the JDK, follow these instructions:
• Go to the Java Sun download page.
• Download the version entitled 'JDK 6 Update XX', where 'XX' stands for some number. (Sun will
provide the latest version on that page.)
• When the download has finished, run the Java installer. At one point, you will be asked to
choose a directory to install to. Copy or write this directory down for use later.
4. On Windows: Please follow these instructions to set your JAVA_HOME environment variable to the
directory you where you have just installed the JDK. By default, this directory is under C:\Program
Files\Java.
The Confluence EAR-WAR edition is intended for deployment into an existing J2EE application server. To
use this method of installation, you or your application server administrator must already know how to
deploy a web application on the application server of choice. If not, please use the Confluence Standalone
edition instead.
On this page:
Confluence supports the following application servers, provided they are running on a Windows,
Unix (NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solarix, Linux), Mac OS X on X86 or X86-64 processors.
Column labelled 'Works with' as opposed to 'Supported in': We assume that Confluence works
fine with these application server versions. But please be aware that we don't test these versions
regularly and that we may ask you to upgrade to a supported version before we can provide more
detailed support.
For Confluence 2.8 and later, zOS, AIX and HPUX are not supported; neither are processors other
than X86. If you can get these application servers running on another operating system, we will try
to help you but may ask you to move to a supported operating system before we can provide more
detailed support.
If you have no preference, we recommend using Confluence Standalone which includes Apache
Tomcat.
• Macromedia JRun
• Apache Tomcat 6 — see reported issue
Support
1. Download the Confluence EAR/WAR zip file. (You need to click the 'Show all' link to see the EAR/
WAR zip file.)
2. Please check your unzip program before extracting the downloaded zip file. Some archive-extract
programs cause errors when unzipping the Confluence zip file:
• Windows users must avoid the Windows built-in unzip utility, as it doesn't extract all the files.
Use a third-party unzip program like 7Zip or Winzip.
• Solaris users will need to use GNU tar to handle the long file names.
3. Extract the downloaded zip file.
• Tomcat users, take care not to unzip the Confluence installation into your Tomcat webapps
folder, as this may cause Confluence to be deployed more than once.
4. You have now unzipped your Confluence installation directory, which should contain the version
number e.g. confluence-2.6.0 or confluence-2.7.2. This directory will be later referred to as
the Confluence installation directory. Inside is a confluence subdirectory, referred to later as the
Confluence WAR directory. Record the absolute path to the Confluence WAR directory.
Review the Release Notes for your Confluence version and apply any patches listed.
Confluence requires a maximum heap allocation (Xmx) of at least 256 MB for normal operation. See
Increasing Application Server Memory.
Do not configure a heap allocation so large that it does not allow enough remaining physical memory
for your operating system and other applications on the server. The heap allocation should be large
To run Confluence without a context path of "/confluence", change the path in the Context tag to
an empty string ("").
3. For docBase, specify the value you noted down earlier.
4. Restart Tomcat, and Confluence should be accessible under /confluence/ on your Tomcat server.
5. Follow the link below to proceed with the setup wizard.
1. Review any known issues and other documentation associated with your web server:
TROUBLESHOOTING
RELATED TOPICS
This notice was published on January 4th, 2008. The most important thing to get out of this
notice is that Nothing is changing immediately. Existing versions (and upcoming point releases) of
Confluence will continue to support Java 1.4, as will the next major version of Confluence. As of
writing this page, the release of Confluence 2.9 is around 4-6 months away.
What is happening?
As part of the ongoing development of Confluence, we are going to be raising our minimum supported
version of the Java platform.
• The next release of Confluence, version 2.8, will be the last major version to support Java 1.4.
• Point-releases of the current (2.7.x) and next (2.8.x) versions of Confluence will be supported on
Java 1.4.
• Confluence 2.9 and later will require at least Java 5.
I use Confluence
Your current version of Confluence will continue to run in your current environment without change, as
will Confluence 2.8 and all 2.8 patch releases. If you choose to upgrade to Confluence 2.9 when it is
released, you will need to ensure your environment is running at least Java 5.
You can check your current JDK version in Confluence. Go to Administration -> System Information -
> JVM Implementation Version. If the version is 1.5 or higher, you will not need to do anything. If the
version is 1.4, you will need to upgrade your JDK before you can upgrade to Confluence 2.9. Instructions
for doing so will be provided in the Confluence 2.9 release notes.
If you are running the Confluence EAR-WAR edition against your own application server, you will need to
check with your application server vendor about which JDK versions are supported.
Plugin developers who want their plugins to work on Confluence 2.8 and earlier should continue to
compile their plugins with the Java 1.4 compiler. Plugin developers specifically targeting Confluence 2.9
and later will be free to use the Java 5 compiler and Java 5 language features.
Why Now?
Our normal policy for JDK support is to follow Sun's Java Technology End-of-Life policy, where only the
most recent three major versions of Java are supported. On Sun's original timeline for the release of Java
7, Java 1.4 would have been scheduled for EOL in (Northern Hemisphere) Spring 2008. Sun's release
roadmap for Java 7 has since been pushed back to 2009, but we feel that it is in the best interests of
Confluence to stick to the original schedule.
Given Java 1.4's near-obsolescence, saved only by the slipping schedule of Java 7, IT departments should
already be planning to transition away from Java 1.4. Our surveys of customers suggest that most are
already running Java 5, and those that don't are running application servers that can easily support the
new version. As such, the cost of continuing to support the old version, both in developer and support
resources, cannot really be justified.
Server administrators can use this guide in combination with the free Confluence trial period to evaluate
their server hardware requirements. Because server load is difficult to predict, live testing is the best way
to determine what hardware a Confluence instance will require in production.
Peak visitors are the maximum number of browsers simultaneously making requests to access or update
the Confluence server. Visitors are counted from their first page request until the connection is closed and
if public access is enabled, this includes internet visitors as well as logged in users.
5 Concurrent Users
25 Concurrent Users
These are example hardware specifications for non-clustered Confluence instances. It not recorded
whether the RAM refers to either total server memory or memory allocated to the JVM, while blank
settings indicate that the information was not provided.
When planning server hardware requirements for your Confluence deployment, you will need to estimate
the server scalability based on peak visitors, the editor to viewer ratio and total content.
• The editor to viewer ratio is how many visitors are performing updates versus those only viewing
content
• Total content is best estimated by a count of total spaces
Confluence scales best with a steady flow of visitors rather than defined peak visitor times, few editors
and few spaces. Users should also take into account:
• Total pages is not a major consideration for performance. For example, instances hosting 80K of
pages can consume under 512 meg of memory
• Always use an external database
As mentioned on the documentation for Operating Large or Mission-Critical Confluence Installations, some
important steps are loadtesting your usecase and monitoring the system continuously to find out where
your system could do better and what might need to improve in order to scale further.
These values are largest customer instances reported to Atlassian or used for performance testing.
Clustering for load balancing, database tuning and other performance tuning is recommended for
instances exceeding these values.
All wiki content is stored in the database, while attachments use either the database or filesystem. For
example, the wiki instance you are reading now uses approximately 13GB of database space.
Private instances manage their users either internally or through a user repository such as LDAP, while
online instances have public signup enabled and must handle the additional load of anonymous internet
visitors.
Related Pages
This information is only relevant if you are installing Confluence on a Windows server.
After you have installed the Java Development Kit in Windows, you must set the JAVA_HOME variable to
the installation directory.
Please check that you have a JDK or SDK — Java JRE is not enough
A common problem is that people have only installed the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). You
need either a Java Development Kit (JDK) or J2SE Software Development Kit (SDK). To confirm
that you have the right version, you can check the Java installation path. Unless you changed the
path during installation, Java will be installed to a subdirectory under C:\Program Files\Java, for
example C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_02
Open C:\Program Files\Java and confirm the installation path is for a JDK or SDK. JRE
installations are not suitable, and have an installation directory begining with jre. The numbers
after the jre are not relevant. Example JREs are:
jre1.3.0_02
jre1.4.0_02
SDK and JDK installations are suitable. Their installation directory begins with jdk or j2sdk, the
numbers at the end are not relevant. Example JDK and SDKs are:
jdk1.5.0_02
j2sdk1.5.0_09
Any installation directory starting with jdk or j2sdk is valid. If you cannot see an installed JDK or
SDK, install the JDK now from the JDK download site
If you already know the installation path for the Java or Software Development Kit, go to Stage 2 below.
Otherwise, find the installation path by following these instructions:
1. Unless you changed the installation path for the Java Development Kit during installation, it will be
in a directory under C:\Program Files\Java. Using Explorer, open the directory C:\Program Files
\Java.
2. Inside that path will be one or more subdirectories such as jdk1.5.0_08. If you have just installed
the Java Development Kit, it will be installed to the newest directory, which you can find by sorting
by date. For example, it may be installed in C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_08. This is the
installation path.
This diagram shows setting the JAVA_HOME variable to an installation path of c:/j2sdk1.4.2:
RELATED TOPICS
Client Requirements
You can use the following web browsers to access Confluence:
More information about browser support and why rich-text editing is only available for some browsers can
be found on the browser support page.
Server Requirements
Confluence works with a broad range of operating systems, database systems and application servers.
Provided you have the technical knowledge, it is very likely that you will be able to run Confluence with
an 8-year-old database, or even on some 8-year-old hardware. Realistically, it is not technically feasible
for us to provide our legendary support service on all environments available. There can only be a finite
number of environments and release versions of those that we support.
Our rule of thumb when releasing a new version of Confluence is that we will officially support
environments that have been released within the last one to two years (latest version if none released).
This does not necessarily mean you need to upgrade your database or application server every time
you upgrade Confluence — but if you do run into problems with an unsupported database version or
application server version, we may have to ask you to upgrade to something newer.
Example: You run Confluence 2.7.3 on PostgreSQL 8.0, and everything works fine. You decide to
upgrade to Confluence 2.8, which is officially supported only on PostgreSQL 8.1.Chances are that you can
run Confluence 2.8 with PostgreSQL 8.0 with no problems whatsoever. You can simply try for yourself if
you feel that upgrading PostgreSQL at the same time is too much of a hassle. If you run into problems
later, we will try to help you even though you are on a officially unsupported platform, and we probably
will be able to help you. But if we can't, then we may ask you to upgrade to PostgreSQL 8.1 or 8.2 before
we dive deeper into the problem. If you know beforehand that a database upgrade is not viable, then it is
best that you consider delaying the upgrade of Confluence.
For further information please also have a look at our Supported Platforms FAQ.
Database
The Confluence installation includes a pre-configured HSQLDB database for evaluation purposes
only. For safe production use, you need to configure Confluence to use an external database listed
below.
Supported Databases
Confluence supports the following database systems, provided they are running on a Windows, Unix
(NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solarix, Linux), Mac OS X on X86 or X86-64 processors.
Column labelled 'Works with' as opposed to 'Supported in': We assume that Confluence works fine
with these database versions. But please be aware that we don't test these versions regularly and that we
may ask you to upgrade to a supported platform before we can provide more detailed support.
If your database does not appear on this list, please read the questions and answers about supported
platforms.
For Confluence 2.8 and later, zOS, AIX and HPUX are not supported; neither are processors other than
X86. If you can get these databases running on another operating system, we will try to help you but
may ask you to move to a supported operating system before we can provided more detailed support.
Please note that DB2 on AS/400 or iSeries is not supported, and DB2 on OS/390 or z/OS is not supported
either. (Issues with bigint data type)
If you have no preference, we recommend using PostgreSQL — it is scalable, free, and easy to set up. For
database setup information, see Database Configuration.
The following databases work with some workarounds and are supported for versions up to Confluence
2.7, and probably still work with Confluence 2.8. However they are no longer officially supported from
Confluence 2.8.
• PostgreSQL 7.1
• Oracle 8i, 9i
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• Sybase ASE 12.5.1
Application Server
Supported and Compatible J2EE Application Servers
Confluence supports the following application servers, provided they are running on a Windows, Unix
(NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solarix, Linux), Mac OS X on X86 or X86-64 processors.
For Confluence 2.8 and later, zOS, AIX and HPUX are not supported; neither are processors other than
X86. If you can get these application servers running on another operating system, we will try to help you
but may ask you to move to a supported operating system before we can provide more detailed support.
If you have no preference, we recommend using Confluence Standalone which includes Apache Tomcat.
• Macromedia JRun
• Apache Tomcat 6 — see reported issue
Antivirus software greatly decreases the performance of Confluence. Antivirus software that intercepts
access to the hard disk is particularly detrimental, and may even cause errors in Confluence.
You should configure your antivirus software to ignore the following directories:
The above recommendation is particularly important if you are running Confluence on Windows. No
matter how fast your CPUs are and how many cores they have, antivirus software will always seriously
slow down your Confluence performance — sometimes to a point where Confluence is impossible to use.
Server Load
Server load depends primarily on the number of users online at once and their usage of Confluence.
Refer also to the tips on reducing out of memory errors, in particular the section on Permanent
Generation Size.
• Install files
• Nightly site backups
• Temporary files
• Text content
• File attachments
Java
Confluence requires a supported version of the JDK (Java Development Kit) to be installed.
• JDK 1.4
• Java 5
• Java 6
Advance Notice: Support for JDK 1.4 is being phased out in future Confluence versions. Please see Java
1.4 Support Timeline for more information.
RELATED TOPICS
If you installed Confluence Standalone using the Confluence Installer (Confluence 2.8 or later), you can
uninstall Confluence using the uninstaller.
The Confluence Uninstaller will not clear your Home directory. This means that your Confluence
database will be safe, even if you are using the embedded HSQLDB database. The uninstaller will
clear the Installation only.
bucket.core.InfrastructureException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:
com.atlassian.confluence.spaces.Space$$EnhancerByCGLIB$$58d74b80
at
com.atlassian.confluence.util.XWorkTransactionInterceptor.intercept(XWorkTransactionInterceptor.java:151)
caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.atlassian.confluence.spaces.Space$$EnhancerByCGLIB$
$58d74b80
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor311.invoke(Unknown Source)
New versions of Confluence are released frequently. Our goals are to:
Feature Releases
We aim to release new versions of Confluence every two to three months. These releases will contain the
bulk of new functionality.
Feature releases are numbered by incrementing Confluence's minor version number, so the move from
Confluence 2.0 to 2.1 and 2.1 to 2.2 both introduced significant new features to the product. Occasionally
we may change to a whole new major version number (Confluence 2.0 was originally slated to be
released as 1.5), but that is mostly done for marketing purposes, and shouldn't be considered to have
Feature releases may not be API-compatible with the previous release. This means that you should test
RPC clients, macros and plugins before running them on a newer version of Confluence.
Bug-Fix Releases
Confluence bug-fix releases are scheduled every two to three weeks, depending on the number and
urgency of the bugs that have been fixed during that particular development cycle. We aim to minimise
the time between a bug being reported and a fix being available, without either us or our customers
having to manage clumsy sets of manual patches.
Bug-fix releases will contain mostly bug-fixes, plus the occasional minor new feature or enhancement.
Enhancements will be limited, however, as the main aim of these point releases is to improve stability,
and make no significant API changes.
Bug-fix releases are numbered by incrementing the patch-level. So the first bug-fix release after
Confluence 2.2 is 2.2.1, followed by 2.2.2. Occasionally, we will re-issue a bug-fix release because
something was faulty with the original download. In that case we will create a "re-issue" release number,
for example 2.1.5a or 2.2.1a.
Obviously, we don't expect anyone to upgrade Confluence every two weeks, administrators should keep
their own schedule, based on how much of an inconvenience is being caused by any bugs that may have
been fixed since. Sometimes, however, a security issue or serious application bug will arise that we feel it
is in everyone's best interests to fix as soon as possible. In such cases, we will recommend in the Release
Notes that all customers upgrade to the latest version.
Development Releases
Occasionally, when possible, we will release preview "development snapshots" of the next major
Confluence version. How often and when we do so depends on the particulars of the current development
cycle. In situations where we are working on a number of disparate features we may be able to do a
number of progressive development releases, whereas in iterations where we are making significant
changes to the Confluence internals, we may not have anything suitable for public consumption until
quite late in the release cycle.
Development releases will be announced on the Development Releases page, and to the confluence-
developer mailing list.
The version number of a Development Release will be the version number of the next major release,
suffixed with -dev. So Confluence 2.3-dr1 will be followed by 2.3-dr2, and so on until the ultimate release
of the finished Confluence 2.3
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
2.7 Development
2.6 Development
2.3 Development
1.4 Development
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Confluence 1.3-DR1 is the first development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.3. In it, we
have rewritten the Space Summary/Space Administration pages to be more useable, adn implemented a
much-requested feature: the ability to undelete pages.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Space Summary
The Space Summary page has been the dumping-ground for every space-related operation and report
since Confluence's early alpha releases. As such, it had become confusing to navigate and hard to find
anything on.
For 1.3-DR1, we have rewritten the space summary to be a suite of tabbed pages, making that whole
area of Confluence easier to navigate, more self-explanatory, and much better-looking.
When a page or blog post is deleted, it is no longer removed completely, but is placed in a space-wide
trash can.
The trash can be found in the Administration tab of the newly rearranged Space Summary pages. Space
Administrators can choose to restore pages from the trash, or purge them so they are unrecoverable.
New Emoticons
Just because.
Bug Fixes
All the bug-fixes that were part of the Confluence 1.2.2 release have also been incorporated into 1.3-
DR1. In addition, we've fixed one or two issues specifically for 1.3-DR1, take a look in JIRA for the full
list.
Confluence 1.3-DR2 is the second development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.3. For
DR2, we have made space-level permissions a lot more fine-grained, and added a new plugin manager
which should open the way to making it easier for people to write extensions to Confluence:
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Note: Because we have made significant changes to permissions in 1.3-DR2, you should check that your
user permissions have been correctly migrated. The upgrade manager should ensure permissions remain
consistent between versions, but as with anything related to security, it's best to double-check.
We've been getting a lot of requests for more fine-grained control over who can do what in a space, so as
a result, we've added a whole raft of new permissions at the space level:
Object Permissions
Page create/edit, remove, export
Blog Post create/edit, remove
Comment create, remove
Attachment create, remove
Space export, administer
The permissions editing screens have been changed a little, too, taking into consideration the feedback
we received from the last DR. All editing functions are now firmly on the edit screen, and we have
introduced a user-picker to avoid having to find users in a massive drop-down list.
(CONF-1877)
(CONF-1878)
Macro libraries are now implemented as plugins, which means that if you have written a macro library,
you will need to convert your macro-library.xml files to atlassian-plugin.xml files.
Themes
(CONF-1856)
It is now possible to package a colour-scheme and a set of customised decorators into a portable
Confluence plugin. Just drop the theme jar into your server's classpath, restart the server and space
administrators will be able to select the theme from the space administration console.
DR-2 comes with two very simple themes (look under themes/ in your Confluence directory), but we will
have more (and more useful) themes available by the time 1.3.0 is released. In addition, we're hoping
that users will continue to share their Confluence modifications in the Confluence Extensions Space, and
that themes will help you continue to share neat things you've done with Confluence.
All the bug-fixes that were part of the Confluence 1.2.3 release have also been incorporated into 1.3-
DR2. In addition, we've fixed a handful of issues specifically for 1.3-DR2, take a look in JIRA for the full
list.
Confluence 1.3-DR3 is the third development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.3 - and a
momentous day in the history of Confluence.
Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so
expand are replaced by ones which can.
That's right - Confluence now has more content than ever before. It reads, stores and indexes email.
Oh, and as a nifty little bonus - it also indexes Word documents, PDF documents, RTF documents, Excel
spreadsheets, PowerPoint files, text files, source files etc... attached to your mail!
Have we got your interest? How does all this magic happen you ask? Read on to pull back the curtain.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Note: Because we have made significant changes to permissions in 1.3-DR2, you should check that your
user permissions have been correctly migrated. The upgrade manager should ensure permissions remain
consistent between versions, but as with anything related to security, it's best to double-check.
Mail Archiving
(CONF-1965)
Confluence is a collaboration tool. When communication happens through email instead of through
Confluence, information will get lost in the depths of someone's mail folders, instead of shared with the
team, archived, interlinked and indexed.
While we would love to see all collaboration within a group to happen through Confluence, it's often
not possible to change the way people work. So instead of finding new ways to force people to use
Confluence instead of email, why not route all the relevant email into Confluence?
Confluence spaces can retrieve mail periodically from a POP mailbox (this will delete all mail from that
POP account, so don't try it on an account you want to keep mail on), or space administrators can import
mail directly from a standard mbox-format mail file.
Once mail is imported into Confluence, it can be browsed chronologically from the Content pane of the
Space Summary page, and can be searched through Confluence's search interface.
In the future, we will be adding new ways to link to and between email (bringing the email closer to the
other content of the wiki), proper representation of email threads, more flexible search, and much, much
more.
We love to play with features right now, so here's how you can:
• Testing mail search is a snap. We're indexing our own mailing list on this very space! View archives
or search mail.
• Testing mailing content into Confluence is also easy - well, relatively. Simply mail
mailtest@atlassian.com and your email will show up here (it only polls the box once an hour, but it
will show up eventually!). It will also be indexed.
We now make much more efficient use of resources by batching updates to full-text search index. This
should lead to improved performance for many tasks within Confluence, but will mean that it may take up
to a minute for a change in the site to be reflected in the site's index. (CONF-2029
In addition, we have made a number of improvements to the indexing of large PDFs, including fixing
some cases where a PDF might cause indexing to freeze indefinitely. (CONF-1953, CONF=1954)
Library Upgrades
Many of the librares Confluence is dependent on have been upgraded for this release, which should result
in improved stability and performance.
We've fixed a handful of issues specifically for 1.3-DR3, take a look in JIRA for the full list.
Confluence 1.3-DR4 is the fourth development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.3. We're on
the home stretch! The final, stable 1.3 isn't far away.
Confluence 1.3-DR4 includes a raft of improvements to mail archiving, a redesigned setup wizard,
significant improvements to the way we back up and restore your system configuration, and a truck-load
of bug fixes.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Note: You will need to rebuild the search index after you upgrade for certain features (including mail
threading) to work properly.
Setup Improvements
Confluence's setup wizard was badly in need of an overhaul, so that's exactly what we've done. Among
the improvements, we have:
• Improved the ordering of steps. For example, if you are importing straight from a backup, you no
longer need a redundant administrative user.
• Added a quick, two-step setup process to get Confluence running straight away
• Made the database setup much more robust, and much better at reporting errors
• Removed those steps that weren't really necessary to get Confluence running
Hopefully this will make it a lot easier to get Confluence up and running, or show off Confluence to your
friends and family.
(CONF-2050)
We've been working hard to build on the basic mail-archiving features included in 1.3-DR3. Included in
the new version are:
We still have a few things to do (date based views, a calendar), but the mail archive is now very useable.
Especially when you take into account...
(CONF-2059)
Of course, it's important for your mail archive to be able to represent conversation threads. How you
present threads, though, is just as important.
Here's how most mail-based web archives present your thread at the bottom of each message:
Not very helpful, is it. Here's how that same bottom-of-the-message view looks in Confluence:
At a glance, you can see exactly where the message sits in a conversation.
Backup Improvements
Confluence 1.3-DR4 contains two significant improvements to backing up and restoring the system.
• You can now exclude attached files from your backups. Of course, this means you have to back
up your attachment directory separately, but if you already have a good backup regime for your
filesystem (and can thus restore the attached files separately), it means that your Confluence data
backups will take up far less room.
• We now include important parts system configuration in your backups. this means that colour-
schemes and plugin preferences are now saved, and fixes a large number of issues that users have
filed due to the restore process not bringing the system back up in the same state as when they
saved it.
Library Upgrades
We have continued the process of upgrading to the most recent stable versions of those libraries
Confluence is built on, which should result in improved stability and performance.
We've also fixed a lot of bugs, as we ramp up for the stable 1.3 release. Take a look in [JIRA|http://
jira.atlassian.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&mode=hide&sorter/order=ASC&sorter/
field=priority&pid=10470&fixfor= 10933] for the full list.
Confluence 1.3-final is the stable release of Confluence 1.3. Woohoo! We made it! The full release-notes
for Confluence 1.3 are located here, this page documents only the changes made since the 1.3-DR4
development release.
1.3-final contains over 100 improvements over 1.3-DR4, mostly focused around fixing bugs, polishing the
interface, and making Confluence ready for a stable release.
Confluence 1.3 is the new stable release of Confluence. It contains a huge raft of enhancements and fixes
made since 1.2.3. If you are running Confluence (and not using Oracle, see below), you should upgrade
to Confluence 1.3. If you are not running Confluence, you should install 1.3 immediately, regardless of
your database.
Current users of Confluence on Oracle databases users may wish to delay upgrading. Read this document
for more details.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Note: You will need to rebuild the search index after you upgrade for certain features (including mail
threading) to work properly.
As part of the DR4 setup improvements, users were given the option to install an example space, but the
demonstration content that was loaded was pretty uninspiring. For the final release, the demonstration
space now contains a suite of demonstration pages, examples of what Confluence can do, and a few
pictures of the Sydney Opera House. This should make it much easier to get Confluence up and running
quickly.
We discovered (from monitoring the http://confluence.atlassian.com site) that our recording of HTTP
referrers was causing some serious performance problems for public Confluence sites. Upgrading to
Confluence 1.3-final should make Confluence a lot more responsive, especially under heavy load.
The notation guide has been reorganised to be more user-focused, making it easier to find the markup or
macro you are looking for.
It is also now possible for macro plugins to insert themselves into the notation guide. Just write your
macro description as a two-column HTML table row, put it in a vm file, and include the following in your
atlassian-plugin.xml file:
The help section can be one of: texteffects, headings, breaks, links, lists, images, tables, advanced,
confluence, external or miscellaneous. If you don't include a help section, it will be put in the 'macros'
section.
We've updated the way we index content within Confluence. A lot of searches that came up empty before
will now find something. In addition, you can now set your primary language for indexing under General
Configuration, so that the indexer can better optimise itself for non-English content.
Also
• By popular demand (it was our most highly voted-for bug), pages are now exported in alphabetical
order, not in order of creation.
• The Remote API can be accessed anonymously, if you wish (anonymous remote access must be
turned on in the general configuration).
• When previewing a page, you can continue to edit on that screen, instead of having to go back to
the edit page.
• The thread view on a mail page has been improved, and the full-thread view is no longer a pop-up.
• You no longer need to be in the confluence-admin group to access the administration pages, you
just need global administrative privileges
• You can link to anything in Confluence if you know its ID in the database (currently this is how you
must link to email): [$1234]
• You can link to anything relative to the root of the Confluence site (useful for pointing to parts of the
site that can't otherwise be linked): [///pages/editpage.action?pageId=1234]
• New macros: {jiraportlet}, {note} {tip}, {information} and {warning}
• A lot more...
In all, over 130 issues were resolved between DR4 and 1.3-final. Unfortunately, merging all the versions
together in JIRA means the list of precisely what went into those 130 has been lost, but if you sort this
list by last-modification date, you'll get some idea... Issues Resolved for 1.3
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 1.4-DR1 (Note, this list doesn't include all the 1.3.1
fixes that were also merged into the development release)
When you move a page between spaces, you now have the option to include all children of that page in
the move. With 13 votes, this was one of Confluence's most requested features.
(Note, as of DR1, you can not both move a hierarchy of pages and rename the root page at the same
time. This bug is filed as CONF-2452)
Another commonly requested feature, you can now attach multiple files to a page at once. By default,
you can attach a maximum of five at a time, but this maximum is configurable.
Pages are served with GZip content encoding, which means less bandwidth consumption and faster page
downloads.
By the final release of 1.4, all major actions within Confluence will trigger an event. These events can
be listened for, and reacted to by a new plugin module type: "listener". This will allow Confluence to be
further customised, as extensions can react to anything that happens within the system.
Creating an event listener plugin is insanely easy. Step one, implement this interface:
package com.atlassian.confluence.event;
import com.atlassian.confluence.event.events.ConfluenceEvent;
/**
* Determine which event classes this listener is interested in.
*
* The EventManager performs rudimentary filtering of events by their class. If
* you want to receive only a subset of events passing through the system, return
* an array of the Classes you wish to listen for from this method.
*
* For the sake of efficiency, only exact class matches are performed. Sub/superclassing
* is not taken into account.
*
* Returning an empty array will allow you to receive every event.
*
* @return An array of the event classes that this event listener is interested in,
* or an empty array if the listener should receive all events. Must not
* return null.
*/
Class[] getHandledEventClasses();
}
And that's about it. We'll be adding information about the events that are being produced in Confluence
over the next couple of days (We would have had them documented today, but Nick, who wrote most of
them, was sick).
Bugs Fixed
All bugs that were fixed in Confluence 1.3.1 are also fixed in Confluence 1.4-DR1.
Confluence 1.4-DR2 is the second development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.4. Seeing
as the DR2 development fortnight straddled Christmas it's not quite as feature-laden as some previous
releases, but we thought we'd give you a few new toys to play with for the New Year.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 1.4-DR2
When you export a page to PDF or HTML, you have the option to include its children in the export.
We now have a popup that can be used to select pages for inserting links, or choosing a page's parent.
The picker lets you choose from your recently visited pages, the list of pages that link to the current
page, or you can perform a search within the picker itself.
As part of the process of making Confluence more flexible, we have implemented the various functions of
the Confluence dashboard and space summary pages as macros. These macros are currently disabled by
default, but if you're interested in using them within regular pages, you can enable them from your global
plugin configuration.
This currently has no effect on the dashboard itself - but will become useful in the future when the
dashboard becomes customiseable. For example, the {spaces-list} macro will reproduce the list of spaces
that appears on the dashboard:
• Spaces:
• My Team New (2) All
Known Bugs
There is a known bug that occurs whenever you enable or disable a plugin in Confluence 1.4-DR2. The
error will appear to be 'null', but the following will appear in the logfiles:
Confluence 1.4-DR3 is the third development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.4. It is the
first step in a process of making the Confluence User Interface simpler, and easier to navigate.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Some of the most frequent feedback we get about Confluence is that while users like the wealth of
features on offer, the interface is often overwhelmed by too much information and too many options,
making Confluence difficult to navigate, and difficult to introduce to non-technical users. Confluence 1.4-
DR3 is the first step in an attempt to present a cleaner, more useable design for Confluence, while still
providing a powerful interface for experienced users.
While the obvious way to get a look at the new interface is just to explore this site, here are a few
screenshots that might help:
New-
More
look New
Functional
recently attachment Simpler
Edit
updated management Dashboard
Page
list for interface
Interface
spaces
Cleaner
(and
wider)
page
view
I'm also compiling a page to help people who are used to Confluence Classic, and might be a little lost in
the new interface: 1.4 Interface - Where Did Everything Go?
Known Bugs
A page has been created in the Discussion space to gather comments, suggestions, compliments and
complaints about the new interface: 1.4 UI Discussion
If you're used to the Confluence Classic interface, the new 1.4 interface might be a little hard to navigate
at first. We think that the new design is a vast improvement, but it's inevitable that people who have
used the application since its release will be wondering where some of the buttons they were used to
have gone...
• Blogs?
• Rename Page?
• Move Page?
• Create Child Page?
• Page Locks?
• Page History? Short URL? Watch Page? Remove Page?
By incredibly popular demand, blogs have been renamed to "News" across the site. While blogs are
all the rage at the moment (or, as my brother would say, very zeitgeisty), it's still far easier to explain
"News" to someone familiar with blogs, than it is to explain blogs to someone who is familiar with news.
Rename page is no longer a separate function. Just edit the page and change the page title, and
Confluence will rename all the links to the page for you.
Move page is no longer a separate function. Just edit the page and change its space, and Confluence will
move the page to the new space for you, renaming any links to the page. If the page has children, you
will be given the option to move all the children as well.
Whenever you select the "Add Page" link from the top of the page, your current page will be
automatically inserted into the Parent Page box. We've found that this is the way most people use
Confluence anyway.
Page locks have been renamed "Permissions" and moved to the bottom of the edit page. We found that
most people didn't understand (or couldn't find) locks, and thus didn't understand that Confluence has
page-level edit security.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. Page History? Short URL? Incoming
Links? Hot Referrers?
All this information has been moved under the "Info" tab when you view a page.
Confluence 1.4-DR4
Confluence 1.4-DR4 is the fourth development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.4. In 1.4-
DR4 the user interface continues to improve, and our new wiki->HTML renderer lands, fixing a large
number of bugs (but probably introducing a few more)
1.4-DR4a
One of the bugs that was introduced in 1.4-DR4 caused the edit option to disappear completely from
the Confluence interface for anyone who was not a global administrator. Because that issue rendered
Confluence mostly unuseable, 1.4-DR4a has been released including a fix to that problem. 1.4-DR4a
also includes the patch for Confluence Security Advisory 2005-02-09.
We would like to remind everyonee who downloads the developer releases that they are not fully
stable.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
The user interface of Confluence continues to improve. A big thankyou to all the users who contributed
feedback on DR3. While the changes between DR3 and DR4 aren't as radical as the last release, we've
been able to polish up a lot of the edges, and make Confluence even easier and more pleasant to use.
We're still gathering feedback on the UI changes, add your input here: 1.4 UI Discussion
Mail Archives
• You can now bulk-delete all mail within a space (mail deleted this way does not go to the trash, and
can not be recovered later!)
• Pagination on the mail archives is a bit more sane: it doesn't try to tell you about every single page
of mail in the archives.
• The mbox importer detects if you're trying to import something that isn't an mbox file, making you
much less likely to break anything if you upload the wrong file.
Nofollow Support
As part of the effort to combat spam on wikis and blogs (Confluence being both), Google came up with
some markup that will cause search-engines not to follow links. By removing the main benefit of wiki-
By default, all URLs inserted in a page (or in comments) will be given the nofollow tag. Inter-page
links (i.e. Documentation Home) or shortcut links (i.e. CONF-2622) will not be tagged. If your wiki
doesn't support public editing or commenting, or you just disapprove of nofollow on principle, the site
administrator can turn the feature off in General Configuration.
V2Renderer
Over the last few releases of Confluence, it has become apparent that the engine we were using to
convert wiki text to HTML was starting to cause us problems. There were a growing number of bugs that
we simply couldn't fix, because the nature of the engine meant that fixing one bug would cause ten worse
bugs to spring up in its place. After a few false starts, we can now introduce 'v2Renderer', which fixes
quite a few of these problems already, and promises to make fixing the rest of them much easier:
Because this is the first public release of v2Renderer, it's likely that there are some situations in which
the markup of pages may change. We've been pretty careful, but users who have been making heavy use
of undocumented (or accidental) features of the old markup may encounter situations in which the page
displays differently to before. Please, please report these problems to us, so that we can fix the renderer
for the final release, or perhaps provide you with a script to painlessly convert your pages to a markup
that works.
Renderer Bugs
If you file a bug about the v2Renderer, PLEASE make sure you put it in the Wiki/XHTML component:
this makes finding all the relevant bugs so much easier for me. – Charles Miller
Macros
There is a new macro API that we will be rolling out for 1.4. However, there's a compatibility layer in
place to make sure that most 1.3 macros will continue to function properly. Most macros written for
Confluence 1.3 will continue to work in 1.4-DR4. Most of our macros are running without any changes at
all, and many of the ones we did migrate were changed over in order to use the capabilities of the new
engine to fix bugs.
We suggest that macro authors who are worried about compatibility test their macros with 1.4-DR4 and
contact us as soon as possible to discuss how we can improve the compatibility layer before the final
release, or help you migrate to the new API.
Known Bugs
The renaming of links when a page is moved or renamed is currently unreliable. This is a side-effect of
the change in renderers, and will be fixed before the final version of 1.4 is released.
Confluence 1.4-DR6
Confluence 1.4-DR6 is the next development release in the cycle leading up to Confluence 1.4. In 1.4-
DR6 we:
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
If you upgrade to Confluence 1.4-DR6 you will need to rebuild your search indexes before search will
function correctly. Look for "Rebuild Search Index" on the global Administration page.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
A highly-requested feature, and the reason this DR took so long to get out, you can now hide pages from
other users. The option for hiding pages can be found at the bottom of the page's "Edit" screen.
• You can hide a page so it is only visible to yourself, or only visible to members of groups you belong
to.
• Once a page is hidden, all its child pages (and their children, and so on) are also hidden.
• A new space-level permission has been introduced to determine which users are permitted to hide
pages.
Just make a page called "We hate..." and put Bob's name in the body.
Improved Themes
While the overwhelming reaction to the User Interface changes we have made in the 1.4-DR series has
been positive, it has sparked continuing discussions on the user mailing list about various aspects of the
presentation of a Confluence site. From these discussions we have determined:
In response, we've moved to vastly improve the level of themeability that Confluence offers. Almost all of
the user interface elements have been pushed into customisable decorators, so if you don't like the tabs,
you will be able to install a theme that removes them entirely! We're hoping to bring out some example
themes with the 1.4 release that do just this, but for now you can read the documentation for the new
decorators in the Theme Plugins documentation.
Plugin Improvements
To make Confluence more flexible, we're introducing more ways for advanced users to extend the
system:
Uploadable Plugins
Confluence administrators can now upload new plugins through the administrative interface, and have
them installed without restarting the server.
Extractor plugins allow you to add custom information to Confluence's full-text index when Confluence
content is saved or updated. The most obvious application for this plugin type is to allow you to index
attachment formats that Confluence does not yet support, but more creative plugin authors might make
use of this as a sneaky way to store and retrieve metadata about any content in the Confluence system.
Documentation for Extractor plugins is coming soon.
XWork Plugins
XWork plugins allow you to add new XWork (Webwork 2) actions to Confluence. Advanced programmers
can add entirely new behaviours to the application: take a look at the examples in XWork-WebWork
Plugins, in which we've implemented a rudimentary "Google Suggest"-like live search entry box for
Confluence:
Servlet Plugins
Servlet plugins allow you to deploy servlets into Confluence dynamically – perfect for integrating
Confluence with some legacy application that is only available as a servlet. See Servlet Plugins for an
example.
You can now upload attachments to blog posts and user profiles, both frequently requested features.
Users have the option to nominate one picture attached to their profile as their "profile picture", but we
There is a new global permission to determine if users can attach files to their profile. This permission is
not assigned by default, so you will need to explicitly give it to users if you want to enable this feature.
Space and global administrators may now easily configure the image displayed as the Confluence logo.
This can be done for each space, or at a global level, without having to actually edit a single file.
A Notifications link on your profile displays a list of all currently configured email watches you might have
set up on various spaces or pages. You can now delete them in one, central, place or simply visit them.
Bug fixes
All bugs fixes made between Confluence 1.3.2 and Confluence 1.3.5 have been merged into the
developer release branch, fixing many annoying bugs including the crash on selecting "Next" in search
results. See also: Issues Resolved for 1.3.4, Issues Resolved for 1.3.5.
Confluence 1.4-DR7
Confluence 1.4-DR7 is the first release-candidate build of Confluence 1.4. In 1.4-DR7 we have resolved
over 120 issues: mostly related to fixing bugs and polishing up the application for a stable release. We
anticipate that DR7 will be the last major build before the stable 1.4 release.
DR7 is not a public release. It has been built and deployed onto http://confluence.atlassian.com as part
of our internal quality-control process, but we have decided that the developer time required to make
this a public beta release would be better directed towards continuing the push towards a final, stable 1.4
build.
Since Confluence 1.4-DR7 is not publicly available, nobody should upgrade. The upgrade note below is
just for completeness, so when we come to gather all these release notes together into a single note for
1.4, we don't miss the warning.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
When you first start Confluence 1.4-DR7 after upgrading, the server may take a few minutes to
become fully functional. This is because Confluence is rearranging information in the database so
that it can be looked up more efficiently. This will only be done the first time Confluence is started
after upgrading.
The changes made between DR6 and DR7 are mostly correctness and polish issues - major feature
development on Confluence 1.4 has been completed. A few notable changes however are:
• The space content tree is now updated dynamically, leading to much faster page-load times and
much less load on the server (for large spaces, this page was turning into a reliable way to DOS
Confluence). However, you must have a modern web browser with Javascript enabled for the tree to
work. (A non-Javascript fallback will be included in 1.4-final - CONF-3098)
• You can now customise the site's name alongside the logo
• The display and navigation of page history diffs has been improved significantly
• Webdav configuration has been reinstated to the same functionality as 1.3.5
• An "insert image" popup has been added to the page editing screen, that can select images from the
page's attachments. There is also an Attachments tab in the "insert link" popup. Allowing file upload
from these popups has not yet been implemented (CONF-3099)
• Many improvements and fixes to email notifications
• Marking your change as a "minor edit" will prevent email notifications being sent
• The new Component plugin module adds new beans to the Spring context
• You can now uninstall plugins via the web interface
• The default theme has various keyboard shortcuts (see the tabs on this page)
• The (outdated) Include Page Macro can now include pages from other spaces
• For developers, macros can now decide whether or not they have a body
• Report showing all attachments to pages in a space (check it out!)
• Generally improved notifications including a much more usable "File Attached" notification
• "View wiki source" link, for all those source junkies...
Confluence 1.4-RC2 is (barring some absolute disaster) the final public developer build for Confluence
1.4. It incorporates all the changes that were deployed in the private DR7 build, as well as around 60 new
bug fixes and improvements.
Confluence 1.4-RC2 is being released to give Confluence customers the opportunity to test the upgrade
path for their existing Confluence installation. By testing your migration with this pre-release, you can
ensure that any problems you may experience will be fixed before the final 1.4 release, rather than
having to rely on ad-hoc patches or wait for 1.4.1.
While 1.4-RC2 is still pre-release software, and we do not recommend upgrading production Confluence
sites until the release of 1.4-final, we would recommend any existing Confluence customer install this
release on a test server, and try to import their existing Confluence data into it.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
When you first start Confluence 1.4-RC2 after upgrading, the server may take a few minutes to
become fully functional. This is because Confluence is rearranging information in the database so
that it can be looked up more efficiently. This will only be done the first time Confluence is started
after upgrading.
The changes made between DR7 and RC2 are mostly correctness and polish issues - major feature
development on Confluence 1.4 has been completed. A few notable changes however are:
• You can upload attachments while editing a page – from the "Insert Link" popup
• The dynamic content-tree degrades gracefully on unsupported browsers
• Many bugs related to PDF export (and images included in PDF exports) have been fixed
• Ü characters in page titles no longer confuse the database
• Text properties set via the contentPropertyManager can now be longer than 255 characters, fixing
related bugs in the {tasklist} and {excerpt} macros
• The {attachments} macro can display the list of attachments inline within a page
• New XML-RPC and SOAP plugin types allow you to deploy web services dynamically into Confluence
• A potential connection leak that has been causing problems for Oracle users has been fixed.
Confluence 1.5-DR1 is the first development release leading up to Confluence 1.5. Developer releases
are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to see what we're up to, and provide
feedback
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features. Developer releases are not suitable for running on production systems.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
DB2 Compatibility
At the time of release, there were a number of issues performing database queries for labels or RSS
feeds against DB2 databases. These issues will be fixed for the next release. For now, though, we do
not recommend testing this release on DB2.
Macro Compatibility
Incompatibilities exist that may cause Confluence not to start if custom macros are deployed.
When upgrading to Confluence 1.5-DR1, be sure to remove any custom Macro plugins from your
$confluencehome/plugins and WEB-INF/lib directories. These incompatibilities will be resolved
before the final, stable release.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
• WYSIWYG Editing
• Labels for content
• A dynamic RSS Builder
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 1.5-DR1
1.5-DR1 also incorporates all the bug-fixes that were made between Confluence 1.4 and Confluence
1.4.3.
WYSIWYG Editing
Browser Compatibility
The Confluence WYSIWYG editor is currently only compatible with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows,
plus Mozilla and Firefox across platforms. Javascript must be enabled in the browser for the editor to
function. Support for Safari under Mac OS X is currently not available. To track Safari compatibility,
please follow this JIRA issue: CONF-3864
Global administrators can enable WYSIWYG editing in the General Configuration screen of the site's
preferences. They can also choose whether users are presented with the WYSIWYG editor by default, or
whether users default to the old wiki markup text-field.
If WYSIWYG markup is enabled, but an individual user does not like the default set by the administrator,
they are free to override it in their preferences.
Another highly requested feature was the ability to categorise content within Confluence, beyond the
rigid heirarchy allowed by spaces and parent-child relationships between pages. To this end we have
introduced labels. Labels are simple one-word 'tags' that can be added to any page or blog-post that the
user has permission to edit. Labels can be used to categorise content, bookmark it, flag it for attention,
or anything else you can think of.
Labels can be added to any page from the edit screen, as a space-separated list of words. If you are
browsing the site with a modern, Javascript-enabled browser, you'll also be able to use the dynamic web
UI to add labels directly from the page itself.
Once a page is labeled, then clicking on the label will enable you to browse other pages that have been
similarly tagged, or browse other labels that commonly occur on the same page.
You can also view the space's 200 most popular labels from the space browser, to get an idea of the most
popular concerns within the space.
Many other Confluence features interact with labels: they can be searched for through the search
interface, the new RSS builder can filter pages by their label, and we're looking forward to building label
support into Confluence's packaged macros, and even the dashboard.
Personal Labels
If you prepend my: to a label (for example, my:todo or my:favourite, then the label is a personal label
– only visible to you. Personal labels allow you to discreetly tag content for your own purposes. You can
browse your personal labels from your user profile. Any user can add their personal labels to a page,
even if they don't have permission to edit it.
A third highly-requested feature. Confluence has always provided a brace of useful RSS feeds, but the
problem is that for every feed we provided, users wanted half a dozen more. The obvious answer is to
let users build RSS feeds based on their own chosen criteria. You can access the RSS builder from the
Confluence dashboard
!dashboard link!
!Builder form!
Once you have decided what you want, Confluence will give you a URL to paste into your RSS reader.
These URLs can be shared with other Confluence users, although they will only ever be allowed to see
content that they have permission to view. If you have asked to authenticate, Confluence will require
HTTP Basic Authentication, which is supported by most RSS readers.
We've also taken the opportunity to improve the presentation of our RSS feeds - including a lot more
information in each feed so you can follow your Confluence site entirely from your newsreader.
!Newsfire screenshot!
The Atom 1.0 draft has just been accepted as an IETF standard. Future versions of Confluence will
be phasing out use of Atom 0.3 in favour of Atom 1.0
Known Bugs
Confluence 1.5-DR1 is a preview, not a full Confluence release, and as such there are a number of known
bugs included in the release (at no extra cost!). Important bugs include:
Confluence 1.5-DR2 is the first public development release leading up to Confluence 1.5. (Confluence 1.5-
DR1 was an internal release only). Developer releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing
our customers to see what we're up to, and provide feedback
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features. Developer releases are not suitable for running on production systems.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Macro Compatibility
Incompatibilities exist that may cause Confluence not to start if custom macros are deployed.
When upgrading to Confluence 1.5-DR2, be sure to remove any custom Macro plugins from your
$confluencehome/plugins and WEB-INF/lib directories. These incompatibilities should be resolved
before the final, stable release.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.x or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
We've been pretty busy, but the four major new features you can find in 1.5-DR2 are:
• WYSIWYG Editing
• Labels for content
• A dynamic RSS Builder
• Change summaries
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 1.5-DR2. 1.5-DR2 also incorporates all the bug-fixes
that were made between TestTest.
WYSIWYG Editing
Browser Compatibility
The Confluence WYSIWYG editor is currently only compatible with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows,
plus Mozilla and Firefox across platforms. Javascript must be enabled in the browser for the editor to
function. Support for Safari under Mac OS X is currently not available. To track Safari compatibility,
please follow this JIRA issue: CONF-3864
The WYSIWYG editor allows for Confluence pages to be edited directly through an editing GUI embedded
in the web browser, without having to remember Confluence's wiki markup. It almost goes without saying
that this has been our number one most requested features, and we're glad we can finally offer it!
Global administrators can enable WYSIWYG editing in the General Configuration screen of the site's
preferences. They can also choose whether users are presented with the WYSIWYG editor by default, or
whether users default to the old wiki markup text-field.
• Full screen view - really useful for editing large pages. Click Cannot resolve external resource into
attachment. in the menu bar.
• Quickly switch between WYSIWYG and Wiki markup without a page refresh
• Change the size of your editing window to suit your browser. Your size preference is remembered
across sessions. To change it, drag the handle in the bottom right hand corner of the editor.
• Undo and redo!
Another highly requested feature was the ability to categorise content within Confluence beyond the
rigid heirarchy allowed by spaces and parent-child relationships between pages. To this end we have
introduced labels.
Labels are simple one-word 'tags' that can be added to any page or blog-post the user has permission to
edit. Labels can be used to categorise content, bookmark it, flag it for attention, or anything else you can
think of.
A Tag By Any Other Name
Picking a name for labels wasn't easy. Google's GMail service calls them labels, while other
collaborative categorisation systems such as del.icio.us and Flickr call them tags. We decided that
'label' was a more natural description. For more information about the philosophy behind labels and
tags, check out the Folksonomy page on Wikipedia
Labels can be added to any page from the edit screen, as a space-separated list of words. If you are
browsing the site with a modern, Javascript-enabled browser, you'll also be able to use the dynamic web
UI to add labels while viewing the page through an interactive interface.
Once a page is labeled, then clicking on the label's name allows you to browse other pages with the same
label, or view related labels that commonly occur on the same pages.
Many other Confluence features interact with labels: they can be searched for through the search
interface, the new RSS builder can filter pages by their label, and we're looking forward to building label
support into Confluence's packaged macros, and even the dashboard.
Personal Labels
If you prepend my: to a label (for example, my:todo or my:favourite, then the label is a personal label –
only visible to you. Personal labels allow you to tag content for your own purposes. You can browse your
personal labels from your user profile. Any user can add their personal labels to any page, even when
they don't have editing permission.
Favourites
Favourites are a special personal label: my:favourite or my:favorite. Whenever you see the Cannot
resolve external resource into attachment. icon, it means you can label this content as being your
favourite, and whenever you see the Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. icon, it means
that the content is currently in your list of favourites. You can view your favourites from the Labels tab of
your user profile, but they come in handy for...
Labels can be used on the Dashboard to create different views of the Confluence site. The list of spaces
now offers the following tabs:
• My shows you spaces that you have labelled as a Favourite. You can label any space you see on the
dashboard by clicking its Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. icon.
• Team allows space admins to dynamically create lists of spaces on particular topics (see below. This
tab only appears if there are teams that the user can see)
• New shows any spaces that have been created in the last week (This tab only appears if there are
new spaces)
• All shows all the spaces in the Confluence site
A "team" is a group of spaces that share a common team label. Spaces can be labeled from the Advanced
tab of Browse Space.
The Recent Changes list on the dashboard will show only content that has been changed in the spaces
that are currently listed in the space view. So if you are currently viewing the 'My' tab, only updates in
your favourite spaces will be shown on the dashboard.
If you are logged in, Confluence will remember your most recently selected tab and team on the
dashboard.
A third highly-requested feature. Confluence has always provided a brace of useful RSS feeds, but the
problem is that for every feed we provided, users wanted half a dozen more. The obvious answer is to
let users build RSS feeds based on their own chosen criteria. You can access the RSS builder from the
Confluence dashboard
Once you have decided what you want, Confluence will give you a URL to paste into your RSS reader.
These URLs can be shared with other Confluence users, although they will only ever be allowed to see
content that they have permission to view. If you have asked to authenticate, Confluence will require
HTTP Basic Authentication, which is supported by most RSS readers.
We've also taken the opportunity to improve the presentation of our RSS feeds - including a lot more
information in each feed so you can follow your Confluence site entirely from your newsreader.
The Atom 1.0 draft has just been accepted as an IETF standard. Future versions of Confluence will
be phasing out use of Atom 0.3 in favour of Atom 1.0
Change summaries
In a very late addition (added during our recent Fedex Day 2), Confluence now has change summaries.
These allow you to add a comment to each edit that will appear in change histories, allowing you to keep
a more complete record of how and why a particular page has been modified.
You can now embed Flash content or movies (Quicktime or Windows Media) into a page as easily as you
can an image: just attach the Flash or movie file to the page, then include it as you would include an
image (!filename.mov!).
You can now export pages straight into Word from the Info tab. This is extremely useful for emailing
around content to non-Confluence users, printing a document or just creating a backup in Word.
• Improved contextual results, showing the most important text around where your query was
matched in the page
• Contextual results for any attachment: see where a search was matched even inside PDF, Word,
PowerPoint or Excel documents!
• Search results for attachments give you more (and clearer) information about what the attachment
is, and where it's from!search-result-fragments.png|thumbnail, align=center!
Improved Gallery Macro
The gallery macro has been spruced up, and now has a slideshow view:
Improved
search
View My
showing
page label personal
fragments
interface labels!
from
showing Only
attachments,
autocomplete. for me!
file sizes
and types.
The new
A very
Dashboard
basic
space
(quite
tabs, here Popular
boring
showing labels for
- sorry,
the "jira" a given
it's late)
team tab space.
example
and one
of change
favourite
summaries.
space.
Also:
Known Bugs
Confluence 1.5-DR2 is a preview, not a full Confluence release, and as such there are a number of known
bugs included in the release (at no extra cost!). Important bugs include:
Confluence 2.0-RC1 is the first release candidate for Confluence 2.0 (previously known as Confluence
1.5). It resolves almost 150 issues since the 1.5-RC2 release.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features. Developer releases are not suitable for running on production systems.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.x or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Important Notice
If, after you have upgraded Confluence, the "Recent Changes" list on the dashboard is empty,
this may be because you need to re-build your site's search index. You can do this under
Administration # Content Indexing # Rebuild Search Index
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
The 2.0-RC1 has largely concentrated on fixing bugs and polishing existing features. If you are upgrading
from Confluence 1.4 or earlier, you should read the 1.5-DR2 Release Notes for a description of the major
new features in Confluence 2.0.
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 2.0-RC1.
• You can now place markup such as bold or italics within a word if you are using the WYSIWYG editor
• The following characters are now permitted in page titles: ! & ( ) * ~ $ _ Pages can not,
however, start with ~ or $.
• The most recent change comment for a page is now included in the page's searchable text
• rel="nofollow" added to links to printable versions of pages, to prevent them from being indexed
by search engines
• The Recent Changes list on the dashboard now correctly reflects whether you are viewing all spaces,
a team, or your favourite spaces
• Further improvements to the edit page UI including:
° Improved label editing
° Inline page previewing
° Hiding of lesser-used functions such as moving a page or editing page permissions
Confluence 2.0-RC2 is the second release candidate for Confluence 2.0 (previously known as Confluence
1.5). It resolves almost 80 issues since the 1.5-RC1 release.
Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them
available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new
features. Developer releases are not suitable for running on production systems.
If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with
the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.x or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Important Notice
If, after you have upgraded Confluence, the "Recent Changes" list on the dashboard is empty,
this may be because you need to re-build your site's search index. You can do this under
Administration # Content Indexing # Rebuild Search Index
Important Notice 2
If, after you have upgraded Confluence and you find the page breadcrumbs do not show the page's
parents correctly, log into your site as administrator, then visit http://yoursite.example.com/admin/
permissions/rebuild_ancestor_table.action (substituting your own site's URL, obviously) to rebuild
the ancestor table (this will be fixed for the final release.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
The 2.0-RC2 has largely concentrated on fixing bugs and polishing existing features. If you are upgrading
from Confluence 1.4 or earlier, you should read the 1.5-DR2 Release Notes for a description of the major
new features in Confluence 2.0.
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 2.0-RC2.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
This development release is being made available specifically for Confluence plugin developers. The
changes to the Confluence API discussed below mean that many plugins will need to be updated to work
with Confluence 2.3.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
The bundled Tangosol library with this development release has a license which expires on August
31, 2006. This release will not operate after that date.
This release should not be used for testing a clustered deployment; the clustering user interface is not yet
complete.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.2.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.x or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 2.2 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Summarised below are architectural changes that might be relevant to plugin developers. Please add a
comment below if there is anything else that should be listed here.
Most of the functionality of Confluence's biggest internal library, bucket, has been split into three new
components: atlassian-config, atlassian-spring and atlassian-event.
Where practical, the old interface is still available as deprecated classes and methods. However, some
plugins will not compile unless modified to use the new package names.
Tangosol Coherence is now the caching library used by Confluence, both in clustered and non-clustered
mode. To facilitate this, some of the caching APIs have been updated.
As mentioned above, the Tangosol license included with this release is specifically for testing purposes
and will expire on August 31, 2006.
The Bandana Confluence configuration files previously stored in confluence-home are now stored in the
database. An upgrade from a previous version will automatically move existing configuration settings to
the database.
Confluence 2.3-DR2 is the second public development release leading up to Confluence 2.3. Development
releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
This development release is being made available specifically for Confluence plugin developers. The
changes to the Confluence API discussed below mean that many plugins will need to be updated to work
with Confluence 2.3.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
This release should not be used for testing a clustered deployment; the clustering user interface is not yet
complete.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.2.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.x or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 2.2 release notes.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
• The Tangosol Coherence jars included in this DR are now fully licensed.
• The API for retrieving historical versions of content has changed.
The getPreviousVersions method of ContentEntityObject has been removed, because it was insanely
inefficient as soon as a piece of content started having lots of versions. It has been replaced with the
following methods on the ContentEntityManager:
/**
* Get a VersionHistorySummary for all previous versions of a ContentEntityObject, starting
with the current
The VersionHistorySummary class defines a limited set of Content data that is relevant to viewing
version histories.
Confluence 2.6-dr1 is a public development release leading up to Confluence 2.6. Development releases
are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
This development release is being made available specifically for Confluence plugin developers to test
their existing plugins against the significant style changes that have been made.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.5.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Confluence 2.5.x themes are expected to be compatible with 2.6 without authors needing to make
any change to their existing themes. This is possible because Confluence will, by default, include all
Confluence 2.5.x specific styles automatically.
However, if you would like to upgrade your theme to use the latest style and typography changes in
Confluence 2.6, you will need to update the way you include stylesheets in your theme. Full instructions
on how to do so can be found here.
Firstly, you will need to disable the inclusion of Confluence 2.5.x styles. These were included by default to
allow 2.5.x themes to remain compatible in Confluence version 2.6 and after.
...
<theme key="aqua" i18n-name-key="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.aqua.name" name="Aqua Theme"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.BasicTheme">
<description key="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.aqua.desc"/>
...
<param name="includeClassicStyles" value="false"/>
...
</theme>
...
Note the flag includeClassicStyles is set to false. You will have to set this explicitly as the default is
true.
Secondly, you will need to declare your custom theme style sheet in atlassian-plugin.xml like this:
...
<theme key="aqua" i18n-name-key="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.aqua.name" name="Aqua Theme"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.BasicTheme">
<description key="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.aqua.desc"/>
...
<resource type="stylesheet" name="my.css" location="styles/my-css.vm"/>
...
</theme>
...
• You no longer have to include your theme stylesheet in the main decorator using
#pluginStylesheet anymore. Confluence will load your theme's stylesheet automatically provided
that its the active theme
• The resource is declared in the theme module instead of the layout module
• You need to start your custom style sheet (say my-css.vm), by copying over the latest styles from
http://yourhost/contextPath/styles/main-action.css. This step is necessary as Confluence
now includes either your theme stylesheet or the default stylesheet, not both. This implies:
° you can no longer rely on the default styles being there to style parts of the Confluence you
stylesheet
° you will need to merge any new styles in later versions of Confluence into your theme's style
sheet
It is possible to configure your theme to use multiple style sheets. This feature may useful if you want
to break up your main style sheet into a few smaller style sheets with more defined purposes. You can
declare these like so:
...
<theme key="aqua" i18n-name-key="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.aqua.name" name="Aqua Theme"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.BasicTheme">
<description key="com.atlassian.confluence.themes.aqua.desc"/>
...
<resource type="stylesheet" name="my1.css" location="styles/my-css1.vm"/>
<resource type="stylesheet" name="my2.css" location="styles/my-css2.vm"/>
These style sheets will be included in the order in which they are declared.
Confluence 2.6-dr2 is a public development release leading up to Confluence 2.6. Development releases
are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
This development release is being made available specifically for Confluence plugin developers to test
their existing plugins against the significant style changes that have been made.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.5.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Confluence 2.5.x themes are expected to be compatible with 2.6 without authors needing to make
any change to their existing themes. This is possible because Confluence will, by default, include all
Confluence 2.5.x specific styles automatically.
However, if you would like to upgrade your theme to use the latest style and typography changes in
Confluence 2.6, you will need to update the way you include stylesheets in your theme. Full instructions
on how to do so can be found here.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.7-m2 is the first milestone development release for 2.7. This is a public development
release leading up to Confluence 2.7. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress,
allowing our customers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.6.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.7-m4 is the second milestone development release for 2.7. (Milestone 3 has been skipped
because of stability concerns.) This is a public development release (DR) leading up to Confluence 2.7.
Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to see what we're
up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.6.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
View the list of fixes and newly implemented features in JIRA. They contain all the issues resolved since
2.6.x, not just the ones fixed since the previous milestone.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.7-m5 is a milestone development release for 2.7. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.7. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.6.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
View the list of fixes and newly implemented features in JIRA. They contain all the issues resolved during
development of 2.7, not just the ones fixed since the previous milestone.
Known problems
For some reason, an outdated version of the new Dynamic Tasklist 2 was included in this milestone. Since
Milestones are not real customer releases, we do ship them with bugs like this. If you want to see the
latest and greatest Dynamic Tasklist 2 in action, please simply upgrade to the latest version using the
plugin repository from the administration console.
Also, there is an annoying (2.7-specific) bug in this release that causes warnings for all colours used by
the colour-macro: http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-10001/. It will be resolved by the time the next
milestone gets released.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.7-rc1 is a release candidate for 2.7. This is a public development release (DR) leading up to
Confluence 2.7. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to
see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestones and release candidates aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the
latest changes in the code.
Each milestone/release candidate has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on
our official internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones and release candidates re timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two
weeks, no matter how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance
that we have new known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new
bugs unknown even to us.
Milestone releases and release candidates have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they
might behave well on a small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.6.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
View the list of fixes and newly implemented features in JIRA. They contain all the issues resolved during
development of this release, not just the ones fixed since the previous milestone.
Known problems
None.
You should really download this Release Candidate and check if your plugin works with it. If not, use the
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.8-m2 is a milestone development release for 2.8. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.8. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers and especially plugin-developers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.7.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Confluence's velocity template engine has been upgrade from 1.3 to 1.5. This shouldn't mean too much
to end users however there could be some compatibility problems with existing themes and plugins.
Check this upgrade guide that we use internally as well: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/
Migrating+to+Velocity+1.5
Pell multipart has been replaced with the Jakarta Commons Fileupload component to handle web browser
file uploads. Again this won't have much impact on the Confluence experience but could cause some odd
problems when attaching files to Confluence.
There has been some optimizations made the space PDF export which should result in less server
memory usage during export
Confluence team have integrated a new GZIP compression filter to achieve more efficient downloads and
page views. This is not currently enabled by default, so to test this with your plugin you need to turn it
on in the management console. We are using it internally at Atlassian, and the performance improvement
while browsing pages is quite substantial.
You can view the complete list of fixes and newly implemented features in JIRA. They contain all the
issues resolved during development of 2.8, not just the ones fixed since the previous milestone.
Known problems
There are a few cosmetic UI problems related to space logos and to the login screen, none of them
impact productivity. Notification mails are empty because of a Velocity macro bug.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.8-m3 is a milestone development release for 2.8. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.8. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers and especially plugin-developers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.7.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
• First draft of UI improvements: We are working hard on moving the HTML and CSS delivered by
Confluence towards standards-compliance and accessibility. We are at the same time reworking
our UI structure. We feel that the UI has been growing a bit too organically over the past years,
resulting in somewhat confusing navigation like the "remove page"-button only available when
you are editing a page, for example. We have implemented an initial dropdown-menu for adding
content, thus already cleaning up the UI a bit. All the navigation-changes we make are targetted at
the default theme, however some HTML&CSS changes may also affect the other themes.
In the future our changes will enable plugin-developers to hook into Confluence easier than before,
and skinning Confluence will be considerably easier. However, plugin-developers should be aware of
the changes we are making, and check (by examining this Milestone release) whether they have to
schedule some maintenance work for their plugins. More changes will be made, so don't rush it - but
plan for it.
You can view the complete list of fixes and newly implemented features in JIRA. They contain all the
issues resolved during development of 2.8, not just the ones fixed since the previous milestone.
Known problems
No major known problems, but plenty of smaller to medium sized bugs, mainly related to page
reordering. They will get tackled in M4.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.8-m4 is a milestone development release for 2.8. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.8. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers and especially plugin-developers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.7.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
This release mainly fixes bugs and glitches of the previous milestone, and extends the functionality
slightly. You will notice that a new dropdown-menu has been added which allows you to access the
browse-space actions easier, and that most macros now honor the new page ordering that can be set in
recently added page-reorder-component.
We had forgotten to release the source code of the previous milestones, this has been taken care of now,
The coolest improvement however is that we are able to deliver the first Fedex 7 project in this milestone
- less than two weeks since the actual event! (see http://blogs.atlassian.com/developer/2007/09/
atlassian_fedex_day_vi.html) for an overview of Fedex 6 last year). Use the new drop-down menu to
"Browse Labels", select one of the most popular ones, and you will now be able to filter by multiple labels
You can view the complete list of fixes and newly implemented features in JIRA. They contain all the
issues resolved during development of 2.8, not just the ones fixed since the previous milestone.
Known problems
There are still a few known bugs in this release, most noticeably the broken printable view (CONF-10583)
which will be fixed soon. Please continue reporting problems through JIRA, your feedback has been very
helpful and a lot of it has been incorporated already.
The CacheManager API has changed in milestone 4, and all plugins that use the old CacheManager
interface will be broken (CONF-10602). In milestone 5, Confluence has a workaround for plugins that
get the cacheManager injected. That is, the following code will work correctly in 2.8-m5 (but is currently
broken in 2.8-m4):
import com.atlassian.user.impl.cache.CacheManager;
Plugins that access the CacheManager not via dependency injection, but statically through the
ContainerManager will fail at runtime with a ClassCastException. These plugins should be rewritten to use
dependency injection, or use the new com.atlassian.cache.CacheManager interface. The following code
is broken in 2.8-m4, and will continue to be broken for the final release of 2.8:
Plugins that wish to avoid using the deprecated CacheManager interface should change to use
com.atlassian.cache.CacheManager.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.8-m6 is a milestone development release for 2.8. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.8. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers and especially plugin-developers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases have not been load- or stress-tested. So, for example, they might behave well on a
small installation but show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.7.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Milestone 6 incorporates Milestone 5 changes (which were released but never publicly documented, sorry)
The user interface improvements include the most drastic changes to be done for Confluence 2.8.
After adding a new Actions menu to the page, we have removed the unnecessary tab navigation. This
completes our migration to a menu-based user interface. The content of the page is now the most
important aspect of the page, as all the editing and modification features are now out of the way when
reading a page. The UI has also been improved in other small ways in this milestone, and we have fixed
many bugs with the printable view and the default themes.
Plugin components that expect to be injected with the old, deprecated CacheManager interface will
now work again. This means plugins such as the JIRA issues macro will be useable once more. Plugins
The Page Ordering feature mostly contains bug fixes. The majority of changes are done in the back end
as we prepare to remove extJS library and substitute the page tree widget with a custom component.
• JMX has been added to the list of Confluence capabilities for improved monitoring
• Raising a support case is now possible directly from the admin console. This will attach logs and
other relevent system information automatically.
• JQuery now default JS library. We have removed ExtJS as a Javascript-dependency, and will
standardize on JQuery in all of Confluence
• Coherence cache lease duration has been set at 10 minutes to support system recovery when
threads do not release their leases properly. A warning message will be logged detailing that a lease
has timed out to help with tracking down errant lease management.
Known problems
• We found a severe performance problem during our loadtests. Confluence works exactly like before
under low load, but once you go above a request per second you will notice a much higher load than
acceptable. We will fix that for the final release.
• Upgrade issue for clustered deployments. Don't use this Milestone on a Cluster.
• a few glitches when viewing with IE6&7
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.8-m7 is a milestone development release for 2.8. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.8. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers and especially plugin-developers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases may not have not been load- or stress-tested, or maybe they have but some
performance problems still persist. So, for example, they might behave well on a small installation but
show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.7.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
End-user improvements
• Matt Ryall's Fedex project: improved comment threading, with dynamic collapsing
The title is not duplicated anymore, you simply edit the title directly
• Replace printable view with an improved print stylesheet for better printing directly from the page
• Improved editor caching
• Fixed editor layout bug in Safari
• Menus appear on hover
• Move command in Tools menu
Page Ordering:
• Included the page ordering tree into the edit-page, ironed out some bugs
• Our student developer Chris Broadfoot added a few missing links into our user-management section,
and incorporated a pretty slick way to change the size of the pagination window. Well done!
API changes
For plugins which configure Confluence's web interface, Condition implementations which depend
on GlobalHelper are now deprecated, and should be converted to use the new WebInterfaceContext
interface. The easiest way for most plugins to do this is to extend BaseConfluenceCondition rather than
the now-deprecated AbstractConfluenceCondition. (Javadoc links to come once this is published.)
Known problems
• We found a severe performance problem during our loadtests. Confluence works exactly like before
under low load, but once you go above a request per second you will notice a much higher load than
acceptable. We will fix that for the final release.
• Upgrade issue for clustered deployments. Don't use this Milestone on a Cluster.
• a few glitches when viewing with IE6&7, and when using the new page tree in a browser without
FireBug installed.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Confluence 2.8-m9 is a milestone development release for 2.8. This is a public development release (DR)
leading up to Confluence 2.8. Development releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our
customers and especially plugin-developers to see what we're up to.
• While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of
testing as a full release.
• Features in development releases may be incomplete, or may change or be removed before
the next full release.
No Upgrade Path
Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade
path between DRs, or from any DR to the eventual final release. So it's possible that you won't be
able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence DR to a future Confluence release.
Our milestone releases aim to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in
the code.
Each milestone release has passed all our automatic tests, and has been used for one week on our official
internal Confluence server. Most of the issues solved have been reviewed too.
However, since our milestones releases are timeboxed (i.e. they get released every two weeks, no matter
how far we have come implementing features and bugfixes), there is always a chance that we have new
known bugs, which are scheduled to be fixed in the next milestone, or completely new bugs unknown
even to us.
Milestone releases may not have not been load- or stress-tested, or maybe they have but some
performance problems still persist. So, for example, they might behave well on a small installation but
show severe problems when subjected to many users.
Upgrade Procedure
Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade from Confluence 2.7.x to this release. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence-home directory and database before upgrading!
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Known problems
• We found a major performance problem during our loadtests. Confluence works exactly like before
under low load, but once you go above a request per second you will notice a much load than
acceptable. We will fix that for the final release.
• a few glitches when viewing with IE6&7, and when using the new page tree. Will be fixed for the
final version
The latest Confluence documentation contains information about all Confluence functionality,
including the updates in the newest Confluence release.
Hint: Finding a list of known issues
To find a list of known issues in a particular Confluence version, you can create a filter in the
Atlassian issue tracker and use the permlink located at the top right of the issue tracker's page to
access the filtered report. The following example filter is the list of bugs reported for Confluence 2.7:
http://jira.atlassian.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?
reset=true&&type=1&pid=10470&fixfor=13115&version=13115&sorter/field=issuekey&sorter/
order=DESC
Confluence 2.8
The Atlassian Confluence team is delighted to present Confluence 2.8.
We have simplified the screen design to focus on content. There's a totally new menu structure for editing
or adding content and many other actions. We've also grouped the menu functions so that they are easier
to use and understand. This will help new users start using Confluence quickly. For our faithful customers,
you may find existing features you didn't know Confluence had!
The much voted for page-ordering feature allows you to define the order of your wiki pages yourself —
just drag and drop your pages into the right position.
We've beautified the display of comments on pages and news items. With the multiple-label filter, you can
combine more than one label in your label searches and surf labels directly via a sensible URL. Getting
Confluence up and running is easier than ever with our new installer. An enhanced task list is bundled
with Confluence, bringing faster response times and a simple yet powerful user interface.
There are some great performance enhancements and a lot for administrators and developers too.
Confluence 2.3
Confluence 2.2
Confluence 2.1
Confluence 2.0
Atlassian is proud to announce the release of Confluence 2.6.1. This is a highly recommended upgrade
from 2.6, because it fixes some security flaws which may affect Confluence instances in a public
environment. We will release more details of the security fixes within a few days, giving our customers a
chance to upgrade before the details are made public. This point release also includes more than 40 other
fixes and improvements.
We're especially glad that anonymous comments will no longer show the profile picture of the previous
commenter, and newly-created spaces no longer seem to have been created by an anonymous user.
The {excerpt} and {excerpt-include} macros now behave better. And we've fixed some issues with
internationalisation.
We have now published the details of the security vulnerabilities, which are fixed in Confluence
2.6.1. Please refer to the security advisory for more information.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. Please read the upgrade instructions. We strongly
recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
9 November 2007
Atlassian is proud to announce the release of Confluence 2.6.1. This is a highly recommended upgrade
from 2.6, because it fixes some security flaws which may affect Confluence instances in a public
environment. We will release more details of the security fixes within a few days, giving our customers a
chance to upgrade before the details are made public. This point release also includes more than 40 other
fixes and improvements.
We're especially glad that anonymous comments will no longer show the profile picture of the previous
commenter, and newly-created spaces no longer seem to have been created by an anonymous user.
The {excerpt} and {excerpt-include} macros now behave better. And we've fixed some issues with
internationalisation.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.6.0, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version. In particular:
• If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
• If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 2.6.0, please read the 2.6 upgrade notes.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
Atlassian is proud to announce the release of Confluence 2.6.2. This is a highly recommended upgrade,
because it fixes some security flaws which may affect Confluence instances in a public environment.
These flaws are XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerabilities in some of Confluence's macros and Wiki
Markup, which potentially allowed a user to insert malicious HTML tags or script into a Confluence page.
Please refer to the Security Advisory for details.
This point release also includes more than 20 other fixes and improvements.
As part of our drive to tighten up the security in Confluence, we have removed support for the 'style'
attribute in the Wiki Markup for images. This was an undocumented feature, which is now no longer
available. To help those who may have used the 'style' tag to add coloured borders, we have added a new
'bordercolor' attribute to the image markup.
The PDF and HTML space exports are now more reliable than in Confluence 2.6.0 and 2.6.1. We've
fixed the failure to send daily digest email notifications. (This problem occurred when the Confluence
instance contained draft pages.) This release also contains some improvements in the wiki's support of
internationalisation. And you'll be delighted to see that the plus and minus buttons are back, next to the
'Recently Updated' section of the Dashboard – so you can now increase or decrease the number of items
you see in that section.
There's a complete list of fixes below. You can download Confluence 2.6.2 from the download centre.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. Please read the upgrade instructions. We strongly
recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
27 November 2007
Atlassian is proud to announce the release of Confluence 2.6.2. This is a highly recommended upgrade,
because it fixes some security flaws which may affect Confluence instances in a public environment.
These flaws are XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerabilities in some of Confluence's macros and Wiki
Markup, which potentially allowed a user to insert malicious HTML tags or script into a Confluence page.
Please refer to the Security Advisory for details.
This point release also includes more than 20 other fixes and improvements.
As part of our drive to tighten up the security in Confluence, we have removed support for the 'style'
attribute in the Wiki Markup for images. This was an undocumented feature, which is now no longer
available. To help those who may have used the 'style' tag to add coloured borders, we have added a new
'bordercolor' attribute to the image markup.
The PDF and HTML space exports are now more reliable than in Confluence 2.6.0 and 2.6.1. We've
fixed the failure to send daily digest email notifications. (This problem occurred when the Confluence
instance contained draft pages.) This release also contains some improvements in the wiki's support of
internationalisation. And you'll be delighted to see that the plus and minus buttons are back, next to the
'Recently Updated' section of the Dashboard – so you can now increase or decrease the number of items
you see in that section.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.6.1, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version. In particular:
• If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
• If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 2.6.0, please read the 2.6 upgrade notes.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
Special thanks
We'd like to thank some of our valued community members whose contributions to the open source
plugin library have made this version of Confluence even stronger:
• Shannon Krebs, for the BloggingRPC plugin, the Contributors plugin and the Social Bookmarking
plugin.
• David Peterson and Bob Swift for the Chart Plugin.
• David Peterson for the IM Presence Plugin, and the Table of Contents plugin.
• Dan Hardiker & Adaptavist for the Plugin Repository Client.
Confluence 2.6 brings many popular features which save you time and improve the your wiki's usability.
Upgrading to Confluence 2.6 is free for all customers with active Confluence software maintenance as at
27th September 2007.
A new theme brings a fresh, clean look and feel. This is for our customers who have asked for a friendlier
interface and improved readability. We've included more social networking features, to enhance the sense
of community in your wiki. For example, author photos are now shown in comments and in the 'Recent
Updates' on the Dashboard. And the Social Bookmarking plugin is now shipped with Confluence, allowing
you to share bookmarks with your team.
Other popular new features include default content for spaces, labels on templates, the ability to
backdate or rename news items (blog posts), official MySQL 5.0 support and PDF export of images.
Upgrade Notes
Draft Pages
All draft pages will be discarded during the upgrade process. Confluence administrators should warn users
of the Confluence site that drafts will not survive the upgrade.
Plugins
If you are using any third-party plugins, please test them thoroughly before rolling 2.6 into production.
For plugin developers: the Joda-time library has been upgraded from 0.98 to 1.4 in Confluence 2.6.
Plugins that use the date formatting or parsing functionality of Joda-time will need to be recompiled to
work with Confluence 2.6.
Custom Themes
Custom Confluence 2.5.x themes are expected to be compatible with 2.6 without authors needing
to make any change to their existing themes. This is because Confluence will, by default, include all
Confluence 2.5.x specific styles automatically. But if you would like to upgrade your theme to use the
latest Confluence 2.6 style and typography, you will need to update the way you include stylesheets in
your theme. You can read full instructions here.
1. If a space uses a custom decorator page layout, the new Confluence 2.6 decorator is not applied.
This may causes GUI oddities, such as:
• On a page, the View, Edit, Info and Attachments tabs are shown as a vertical bulleted list
instead of tabs.
• Comments do not show properly.
Fix: Apply the Default Page Layout, then re-insert the custom code.
2. In addition, if you are using pagetree navigation to form a table of contents on the left, you may
find that your wiki text becomes italic after upgrading to Confluence 2.6.
• Cause: To create the left-hand panel, you have probably inserted a chunk of HTML/CSS in the
space's page layout. The chunk of code may use a <blockquote> element to align the body
of the page and draw a blue line on its left. Confluence 2.6 stylesheets apply the italic style to
blockquotes.
• Fix: Use a new format for your left-hand panel. One possible example is given here.
Steps in detail:
1. Go to the Space Admin screen and click 'Edit' to view your customised Page Layout.
2. Copy the customised code.
3. Cancel the edit.
4. Click 'Reset Default' to apply the new Confluence 2.6 default page layout.
5. If you are using the pagetree navigation panel, edit your customised code as described above.
6. On the Space Admin screen, click 'Create Custom' to create a custom page layout.
7. Reinsert your customised code and click 'Save'.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2.x or a later version, you can find instructions here.
If you are upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier, you should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for warnings
about the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
24 January 2008
Presented with pleasure by the Atlassian Confluence team: Confluence 2.7.1 is a recommended upgrade
which fixes a security flaw and other bugs, and brings a couple of improvements.
We have identified and fixed an XSS (cross-site scripting) security flaw which may affect Confluence
instances in a public environment. For details, please refer to the security advisory.
Recording of authorship and history for page attachments is improved, so that attachment history is now
retained after operations such as editing the attachment or moving it to a new page.
A new option on the Export Space screen allows administrators to export all pages to XML even when
page-restrictions deny the administrator access to some of the pages.
There's a complete list of fixes below. Click a specific issue to see details of the fix, and to download any
patches where relevant.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. Please read the upgrade instructions. We strongly
recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Confluence 2.7.1 is a recommended upgrade which fixes a security flaw and other bugs, and brings a
couple of improvements. You'll find details of the fixes in the release notes.
Upgrade Notes
As part of the fix for case-sensitivity in usernames and group names when using LDAP integration
(CONF-9469), an upgrade task will consolidate permissions for the same user or groups where they differ
only by case.
Depending on the size of your Confluence installation (number of spaces and the permissions applied to
them) the upgrade task could result in a longer-than-usual delay when starting Confluence for the first
time after the upgrade. Please be patient while this happens — it could take a few minutes.
During this process there will be regular progress reports in the log, something like this:
The upgrade task will modify permissions in your Confluence database. So that our usual 'strong
recommendation' to back up the database becomes even stronger.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.7.0, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version. In particular:
• Please read the 2.7 upgrade notes.
• If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
6 March 2008
Confluence 2.7.2 is a recommended upgrade which fixes a security flaw and other bugs.
We have fixed a security flaw which allowed users who have 'View' permission (or higher) on a space to
purge any page in that space. For details, please refer to the security advisory and related JIRA issue.
• The Rich Text editor no longer breaks links to pages in other spaces.
• Some customers have reported problems with permissions after upgrading to Confluence 2.7.1,
where some space permissions or global permissions were lost if using a case-sensitive database.
From Confluence 2.7.2, the space permissions and global permissions screens will display a
message highlighting any case-sensitivity problems. We have also provided a routine to fix existing
permissions affected by this issue — read the detailed instructions on running the routine.
• The JIRA Portlet macro now displays correctly when using trusted communication between JIRA and
Confluence.
• Confluence 2.7.2 also clarifies the procedures around renewing your license before upgrading.
There's a complete list of fixes below. Click a specific issue to see details of the fix, and to download
patches where relevant.
Confluence 2.7.2 is a recommended upgrade which fixes a security flaw and other bugs. You'll find details
of the fixes in the release notes.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.7.0, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version. In particular:
• Please read the 2.7 upgrade notes.
• If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
19 March 2008
Confluence 2.7.3 is a recommended upgrade which focuses on fixing a number of security flaws. Please
refer to the security advisory for details of the vulnerabilities, risk assessment and mitigation strategies.
There's a complete list of fixes below. Click a specific issue to see details of the fix, and to download
patches where relevant.
Confluence 2.7.3 is a recommended upgrade which focuses on fixing a number of security flaws. You'll
find details of the fixes in the release notes.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.7.2, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version. In particular:
• Please read the 2.7 upgrade notes.
• If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
{jiraissues:url=CONTENT|
columns=type;key;summary}
{jiraissues:url=CONTENT|
columns=type;key;summary|anonymous=true}
and tooltips.
• Read more about inserting an image and
attaching a file to a page.
Confluence 2.7 has improvements for administrators and end-users alike. Administrators can set up
trusted communication between Confluence and JIRA. The result? The JIRA Issues and JIRA Portlet
macros will show only the issues which the Confluence user is authorised to see. You no longer need to
include a username and password in the markup code.
The two-tier administrator permissions allow system administrators to delegate some functions to team
leaders or managers. Logging is simplified, and administrators can change logging levels at runtime. The
improved user management framework speeds up your user searches.
Sorting of images is now possible in the Gallery macro. And when creating a page or news item, you can
attach images or files immediately, without waiting until you have saved the page.
Refer to the release notes for details of the features, improvements and bug fixes in this release.
On this page:
Upgrade notes
Plugins
If you are using any third-party plugins, please test them thoroughly before rolling 2.7 into production.
Configuring Resin
This note applies if you are using the Resin application server. Due to an upgrade to one of the core
components of Confluence (namely Spring), it will no longer work against an out-of-box configuration
of Resin. To resolve this, you will need to configure Resin to use an XML parser that is XSD-aware. More
information:
Confluence 2.7 provides a new trusted communication protocol, to allow secure authentication for the
JIRA Issues and JIRA Portlet macros.
When upgrading, consider whether to disable warning messages or turn off trusted communication
altogether. You may like to do this if you have a number of existing JIRA Issues or JIRA Portlet macros in
your Confluence pages, and you do not intend to set up trusted communications soon. Read more about
configuring trusted communications.
By default, trusted communication will be enabled when you upgrade to Confluence 2.7. This will affect
your existing macros as follows:
• If the macro markup contains a username and password, the functionality is unchanged.
• If you have already set up trusted communication with a JIRA instance, the macro output will be as
described in the guide on trusted communication.
• If the macro markup does not contain a username and password and you have not set up trusted
communication with a JIRA instance, your Confluence pages will show a warning message above the
macro output. See more information on troubleshooting.
The option to store Confluence attachments on a WebDAV server has never worked in a useful fashion,
and has not been maintained for many versions.
User migration
Confluence 2.7 replaces OSUser with AtlassianUser as the underlying user management framework,
greatly improving performance. Read more information about user management in Confluence.
When you upgrade from an earlier version of Confluence to release 2.7.0 or later, your users will be
automatically migrated to AtlassianUser (but see the exceptions in the next paragraph). You may notice
that your upgrade takes longer than usual, due to this migration process.
• You have delegated user management to either JIRA or LDAP, or you have changed your user
management from the standard configuration. If this is the case, you should upgrade as usual,
ensuring that you retain your existing atlassian-user.xml or osuser.xml file.
• You have already migrated to AtlassianUser.
The progress of the migration will be shown in your log files. For example, a successful migration will
show:
Confluence 2.7 brings two administrator-level permissions in place of one. The new permissions are
'System Administrator' and 'Confluence Administrator'. Refer to the documentation for details.
Confluence's default logging behaviour has changed with Confluence 2.7. Both Standalone and EAR/WAR
editions follow the same default behaviour:
• When you start Confluence, log entries will be sent to the application server logs until Confluence
has completed its initial bootstrap. Any log entries will be repeated into the <confluence-home> log
described below.
• Once the initial startup sequence is complete, all logging will be to <confluence-home>/
logs/atlassian-confluence.log. For example: c:/confluence/data/logs/atlassian-
confluence.log.
Note that the default location is now the Confluence home directory instead of the application
server's log file.
Java versions
Confluence 2.7 supports Java 1.4, Java 5 and Java 6. We recommend Java 6 because of its increased
performance and easier troubleshooting, due to enhanced memory dump and profiling capabilities.
Advance notice: Java 1.4 will be deprecated in a future release. Confluence 2.8 will be the last version
that supports Java 1.4.
Upgrade procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.6.x, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version. In particular:
• If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
• If you are upgrading from a version earlier than 2.6.0, please read the 2.6 upgrade notes.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
Below is the full list of issues resolved by Confluence 2.7. You can read the release notes here.
28 March 2008
Confluence 2.8 will be launched in a few weeks' time. These release notes apply to Confluence 2.8 Beta,
which is currently undergoing internal testing. These release notes show the highlights of the upcoming
release, although we have not included all the enhancements and bug fixes. We'll publish the final and
complete release notes with the release of Confluence 2.8.0.
If you are interested in trying out a developer's release, please take a look at the information and
warnings in Development Releases.
• One of the most popular feature requests is now reality — Confluence allows manual page ordering.
• You can choose the order in which wiki pages are displayed.
• Use a dynamic tree view to drag and drop your pages into the right position.
• Page order is reflected in all tree views for a space or a page family, including the PageTree macro
and exports to PDF, HTML and XML.
• Read the documentation.
Collapsible Comments
http://CONFLUENCE_HOSTNAME/label/fedex+ideas
10 April 2008
The much voted for page-ordering feature allows Error formatting macro: toc:
you to define the order of your wiki pages yourself java.lang.NullPointerException
— just drag and drop your pages into the right
position.
Page ordering
• One of the most popular feature requests is
now a reality — Confluence allows manual
page ordering.
• You can choose the order in which wiki pages
are displayed.
• Use a dynamic tree view to drag and drop
your pages into the right position.
• Page order is reflected in all tree views
for a space or a page family, including the
PageTree macro and exports to PDF, HTML
and XML.
• Take a look at the documentation to learn
more.
Collapsible comments
• We've beautified the display of comments on
pages and news items.
• You can collapse comments to a single line.
Multiple-label filter
• Combine more than one label in your label
searches.
• Use the '-' link next to the label name to
subtract a label from your multiple-label
search.
• Browse labels simply by typing in a URL,
such as:
http://CONFLUENCE_HOSTNAME/label/fedex
+ideas
Confluence installer
• The installation wizard lets you install
Confluence Standalone edition without fuss
or bother.
• Your Java environment is automatically
configured.
• Confluence starts up in your browser after
installation and leads you straight into the
Setup Wizard.
• You can choose to install Confluence as a
Windows service.
Task list
• The enhanced task list plugin is now bundled
with Confluence.
• Permissions in the task list match the
permissions of the page containing it.
• New user and group pickers help you to
choose the right person or group.
• The sophisticated visual design suits the
Confluence look and feel — take a look at the
borders, icons, radio buttons and the handy
visible cue on drag-and-drop.
• The data is stored in the page, and you can
edit it there too.
• Performance on list operations is vastly
improved.
• Existing task lists are upgraded on first edit.
Read more in the upgrade notes.
• Here's the guide to using the macro.
Performance enhancements
• You will notice significant performance
improvements in this release.
• A new gzip compression filter speeds up
the transfer of data from Confluence and
uses far less memory than the earlier
implementation.
• The PDF space export uses less server
memory.
• And more for the technically-minded:
° The commonly-accessed resources use
Special thanks
We'd like to thank Shannon Krebs, David Peterson and David Chui in particular for their continuing
contributions to the open-source Confluence plugin library.
Below are some essential notes on upgrading to Confluence 2.8. For details of the new features and
improvements in this release, please read the Confluence 2.8 Release Notes.
On this page:
Upgrade Notes
Crowd Integration
If you are using Atlassian Crowd as your Confluence user management and single sign-on solution, please
upgrade to Crowd 1.3.2 or later. With Confluence 2.8 the atlassian-user interface has changed, and
Crowd 1.3.2 provides the required update to Crowd's atlassian-user integration module.
Confluence 2.8 introduces the ability to move pages into any order you choose.
As part of the above feature, we have changed the default page order in Confluence, from simple
alphabetical ordering to a 'natural' ordering. The natural ordering handles numeric values correctly when
doing string comparisons.
Impact:
• The new natural ordering is the same as the ordering already used by the PageTree plugin, which
some customers use to create a left-hand navigation panel.
• The change to natural ordering should have little effect on most users because, under most
situations, natural ordering and alphabetical ordering will produce the same results.
• For customers who have inserted chapter or page numbers to force the correct order, the new
natural ordering will show the existing pages in the correct order.
If you do find that the order of your pages is adversely affected, you can use the new page-ordering
function to move the pages.
Plugins
Please check the following if you have added any plugins to Confluence:
• If you are using any third-party plugins, please test them thoroughly before rolling 2.8 into
production.
• The PageTree plugin has been updated. If you are using this plugin, please download the latest
version to ensure compatibility with Confluence 2.8.
Confluence's Velocity template engine has been upgraded from 1.3 to 1.5. Please test carefully for
compatibility problems with existing third-party themes and plugins. For developers, there's more
information about Migrating to Velocity 1.5.
Dynamic Tasklist 2
The Dynamic Tasklist 2 plugin is now bundled with Confluence. The new tasklist macro replaces the
older tasklist and dynamictasklist macros. What happens to existing tasklists?
• By default, the new macro will be enabled and the older macros disabled in your Plugin Repository.
• When someone views a page containing an older version of the task list, the display will show the
new format but the page will not be updated.
• When someone first adds a task or changes anything in the task list, the data will be converted to
the new format.
The Confluence Upgrade Guide includes instructions on re-applying your customisations after the
upgrade. We're repeating some of that information here, because it's particularly important due to the UI
changes in this release.
If a space uses a customised page layout, the new Confluence 2.8 layout will not be applied. This means
that you will not see the new menu structure within that space. For example, this will happen if you are
using pagetree navigation to form a table of contents on the left.
Fix: Apply the Default Page Layout, then re-insert your custom code.
Steps in detail:
1. Go to the Space Admin screen and click 'Edit' to view your customised Page Layout.
2. Copy the customised code.
3. Cancel the edit.
4. Click 'Reset Default' to apply the new Confluence 2.8 default page layout.
5. On the Space Admin screen, click 'Create Custom' to create a custom page layout.
6. Reinsert your customised code and click 'Save'.
JavaScript Libraries
Advance notice — deprecated libraries: We have decided to standardise on jQuery as the JavaScript
library for Confluence. This library will eventually replace all others. For this reason, use of the following
JavaScript libraries in Confluence is deprecated:
Because there is a lot of legacy plugin code using Prototype and Scriptaculous, these will continue to be
available for at least one more major release of Confluence.
Java Versions
Confluence 2.8 supports Java 1.4, Java 5 and Java 6. We recommend Java 6 because of its increased
performance and easier troubleshooting, due to enhanced memory dump and profiling capabilities.
Advance notice — Java 1.4 will be deprecated in a future release. Confluence 2.8 will be the last version
that supports Java 1.4. Please refer to the Java 1.4 Support Timeline for more information.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the
latest version:
1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your confluence.home directory and
database.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.7.x, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all
releases between your version and the latest version.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
RELATED TOPICS
Below is the full list of issues resolved by Confluence 2.8. You can read the release notes here.
Refer to Using the Confluence Screens for an overview of the new Confluence menu structure.
On this page:
The image below shows a Confluence 2.8 screen, with numbers added to the image. The numbers relate
to a table of menu commands below the image, showing the new menu structure. Finally, there is a
comprehensive table of menu commands, their new locations and how to get there.
The following screenshot and numbered list show the new menu layout in Confluence 2.8.
The numbers in this list relate to the numbers added onto the image above.
This table lists every change to the menu structure that has occurred in Confluence 2.8. Names for
some commands have changed, so the old menu option names are listed, next to the new names, with
instructions for finding them. (You can search the text on this page for the name of a menu item you
used to use in an earlier version of Confluence – you'll find instructions next to it.)
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence 1.0
Ring the bells. Break out the champagne. Paint the town red. Dance naked in the streets. Or at least
that's what we'll be up to tonight, because we're finally releasing Confluence 1.0!
Confluence 1.0 represents the hard work and dedication of quite a few people. Obviously there's the
development team: Ara, Armond, Charles, Dave, Mike and Ross, but there's also the JIRA team and
the rest of the guys at Altlassian who have offered support, advice, and loud music. A huge thanks also
goes out to everyone involved in the beta-testing program. Your real-world use of Confluence gave us
invaluable suggestions and bug-reports, and we apologise for the times we've messed up your databases
on the way.
We're pretty proud of all the cool stuff we've managed to fit into Confluence already, and we're looking
forward to making it even better in forthcoming versions (Remember, a license entitles you to a year of
upgrades).
The only sad moment for the day is that for the 1.0 release, we had to lose emoticons. The regular
expression responsible for turning into a smiley-face was causing pages to take ten seconds to
render. Commenting out the filter lowers the rendering time of even highly complex pages to a few
hundred milliseconds. We promise, the smileys will return in a future version, faster and stronger than
ever! Or if you don't mind the cost, you can re-enable them by uncommenting the emoticonFilter line in
wikiSubsystemContext.xml
Users of late Release Candidate builds will notice a substantial improvement in performance as a result.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Notable Bug-fixes since RC6
3. Outstanding Issues
4. Upgrading from RC6
5. Notable Features from Previous Releases
New Features
For once, we managed to resist the urge to add any new features this week, since we were busy cleaning
everything up for today's release.
Notable Bug-fixes
• We have verified that you can now use Confluence's internal datasources with MySQL (for users of
RC5 or earlier, see the upgrade section below for information on how to change to the production-
ready datasources)
• Fixed the database transaction problems that were causing problems with user/group management,
page renaming and commenting
• [~user] links no longer place the context path in the link twice
• Fixed a rendering regression that caused text to be spaced incorrectly within panels
• The 404 error page no longer causes a NullPointerException
• The recent comments RSS feed returns a valid RSS version number
• The 'diff' link now works in HTML edit notification emails when Confluence is installed in a non-root
context.
Outstanding Issues
• The Emoticon filter is currently shipped disabled, because it was causing page-load times to go
through the roof CONF-963
• You can not complete the Confluence setup process if you have external user-management enabled.
Set up Confluence before setting up external user-management. CONF-950
We haven't made any changes to the database schema, so you should just be able to install the new
version of Confluence, point it at your existing confluenceHome directory, and carry on as before. I would,
however, recommend making a backup before you upgrade, just in case.
If you:
1. have not gone through the Confluence database setup steps since Confluence 1.0RC5
2. are running the embedded HSQL database, or are connecting to a database directly (not through an
Application Server Datasource)
Then you will need to add a few connection pooling properties to confluence.cfg.xml file in your
confluenceHome directory. Edit the file, and insert the following somewhere in the <Properties> section:
If you do not fall into the category described above, or if you find these lines are already in the file, you
do not need to do this!
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_statements"><![CDATA[0]]></property>
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.min_size"><![CDATA[0]]></property>
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.timeout"><![CDATA[30]]></property>
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_size"><![CDATA[4]]></property>
This will enable c3p0 connection-pooling, which is far more reliable than the default pooling that we were
using previously.
Here's a quick retrospective of some of the cool things we have added to Confluence during the beta- and
RC- releases. It is by no means comprehensive, but you can follow the links to the original release notes
for an idea of just how busy we've been in recent months.
• Shortcut links allow you to create special URL Shortcuts to point to existing web services: i.e.
CONF-195
• Undefined and Orphaned Pages reports
• Revert page to previous version
• Pages that have changed since your last login are highlighted in the 'recent changes' list
• Pages can be organised in parent-child hierarchies, allowing for clearer organisation of pages within
a space
• Page renaming refactors links to the page, wherever they may appear in the site
• Search works across all content in the site, including comments, space descriptions and user
information
• A new permission was added for creating comments
• Beta2 was released a few days earlier, but we'd prefer not to talk about it.
• Searching works across PDF, HTML, XML and Word attachments
• The colour-scheme and page decorators can be configured across the site
• The site homepage is configurable
•
Emoticons
• New macros: {include}, {include-html}, {rss}, {search}, {jiraissues}, {junitreport}
• User profiles can be longer than 255 characters
• Much better handling of anonymous contributions
• XML-RPC and SOAP APIs allow you to programmatically interact with Confluence
• Trackback allows Confluence to notify other sites of links, and be notified by them
• User notifications on page and space editing were overhauled
• Look and Feel configuration was enabled individually for each space
• Linking to space descriptions and user profile pages directly is now possible: Confluence Community,
Mike Cannon-Brookes
• History popup tracks more than just pages
• RC3, RC4 and RC5 were released within days of each other, in a flurry of mad bug-fixing
• Page templates can now be filled in in-line
• If a page is moved or renamed and you go to the URL it used to inhabit, Confluence will try to direct
you to its new location
• Exported PDFs now incorporate the site's stylesheet
• You can prevent people signing up, for private Confluence installations
• You can configure Confluence to mask user email addresses
• User management can now be shared with JIRA
• Page templates can now contain drop-down menus and text areas
• New macro: {html}
Atlassian have set up a demonstration space called 'the Confluence Test Space' so that you can try out
Confluence for yourself.
The demonstration space has been configured so that anyone can create or edit pages within it. When
using it, you should keep the following in mind:
• This server may not be running exactly the same version of Confluence as is available for purchase.
While we try to keep the two in sync, there may be differences between the demo site and the
downloadable version of Confluence. The version that the site is running can be found at the bottom
of each page.
• Because the space is open for anyone to edit, Atlassian cannot be responsible for the content on it.
Do not rely on anything you read in the test space.
• The contents of the test space may be edited or deleted at any time. Periodically, Atlassian may
restore the test space from backup, deleting everything that has been added to it by visitors.
• For a full demonstration of Confluence, including its administrative features, you should download an
evaluation instead.
• If you have any questions, contact us and we'll be happy to answer them.
Want to try Confluence yourself?
Experiment with Confluence in our demonstration space >>
Confluence 1.0.1
Over the course of the last month of supporting Confluence 1.0, there are a number of patches that
we have been distributing to fix specific problems our users have encountered. Confluence 1.0.1 is a
maintenance release into which all these patches have been integrated.
All the issues that were resolved for this release are listed below. We have not snuck in any other
changes: what you see here in the release notes is precisely what you will get. If you find something on
the list that directly affects you, or that you feel justifies the effort of an upgrade, then do so. Otherwise,
feel free to stick with 1.0.
Upgrade Procedure
If you have customised Confluence's user-management, for example to integrate it with LDAP or JIRA,
you will have to integrate your changes to account for the caching OSUser providers we introduced in
Confluence 1.0.1. See this document for more details: Confluence Caching OSUser Provider. Updated
instructions for integrating with JIRA user management are here: Delegate user management to use JIRA
logins
Otherwise
To avoid the possibility of data-loss, you should back up your ConfluenceHome directory and your
database before upgrading, and perform a full backup from within the application.
Changes in 1.0.1
In response to a loud demand from users, links to attachments using the [^attachment.jpg] syntax will
download the attachment file directly, instead of linking to an anchor in the destination page.
Confluence 1.0.1 resolves the following problems that were causing Confluence not to work with Sybase
ASE 12.5.1:
These bug-fixes may also improve Confluence's compatibility with other untested databases. They will
not, however, have any effect on Confluence's operation against PostgreSQL, MySQL or HSQL.
The Microsoft SQL Server database dialect was missing from the database setup page. It has now been
added to the list. Confluence has not yet been tested on Microsoft SQL Server, and the usefulness of this
option is not yet guaranteed. However, since the Sybase issues above are now resolved and SQL Server
belongs to the same family as Sybase, it would be well worth a try.
Users who were linking their user management to JIRA's using the supplied provider were experiencing
significant performance problems as a result. 1.0.1 introduces caching to the user provider, which should
speed up these installations significantly.
Under Confluence 1.0, the global "undefined pages" and "orphaned pages" reports did not properly
filter out pages that the user could not see. The user could not see the content of any page they did not
have access to, but they could learn of the existence of (and names of) pages and spaces they were not
permitted to see. This bug is fixed in 1.0.1
In Confluence 1.0, dates were written into backup files using a localised representation of the month. As
such, if you exported Confluence data from a server in one locale it might not import successfully into a
server with a different Locale setting. Confluence 1.0.1 still recognises the 1.0 export format, but its own
exports will write out dates in a locale-independent format.
As noted above, this means that data exported from Confluence 1.0.1 can not be imported successfully
into Confluence 1.0.
Previously, if you created a template containing no variables, then anyone attempting to preview or use
that template would have their browser hang in an infinite Javascript loop. Confluence 1.0.1 fixes this
bug.
Confluence 1.0.3 is another maintenance release, hopefully the last maintenance release we will need
on the 1.0 branch before moving full steam ahead towards version 1.1. It fixes some bugs regarding the
remote SOAP/XML-RPC API, the display of the 404 error page under Postgresql, and the display of the
site's stylesheet under certain versions of Internet Explorer.
The Confluence development team are now working hard on 1.1, which will contain significant
improvements and new features. Remember, a Confluence license entitles you to a year of upgrades, so if
you buy 1.0.3 today, you'll be able to upgrade to 1.1 for no extra charge when the time comes.
Confluence users should be running at least Confluence 1.0.2. Versions prior to 1.0.2 contain a bug that
will cause their licenses to expire a month after the build date listed in the page footer, regardless of the
true expiry date of the license. Versions 1.0.2 and later do not contain this bug. (Note: In the absence of
this bug, only trial licenses ever expire. Purchased licenses for Confluence do not expire.)
All the issues that were resolved for this release are listed below. We have not snuck in any other
changes: what you see here in the release notes is precisely what you will get. If you find something on
the list that directly affects you, or that you feel justifies the effort of an upgrade, then do so. Otherwise,
feel free to stick with 1.0.2
Upgrade Procedure
Confluence 1.0.3 contains no database or configuration file changes, so you should just be able to unpack
it on top of your existing Confluence installation:
To avoid the possibility of data-loss, you should back up your ConfluenceHome directory and your
database before upgrading, and perform a full backup from within the application.
Changes in 1.0.3
The global RSS feeds found on the Dashboard page were not being generated correctly: an extra ')' was
being added to the end of links. This has been fixed in 1.0.3
Users running Confluence against a Postgresql database were encountering a system error whenever
someone attempted to visit a page that did not exist. This has been fixed.
Several outstanding issues with the remote API that were holding back the [TimTam|] client have been
fixed. In addition a getVersion method has been added to allow client authors to determine which
version of Confluence a server is running, and adjust their features to match. The full description of
Confluence's remote API is here: Remote API Specification
• The WSDL file now respects the server's configured base URL, so SOAP can be used on servers that
are behind a proxy.
• getPermissions now recognises when a user is in the confluence-administrators super-user
group.
Other Fixes
• You can now comment on a blog post when the title contains non-US-ASCII characters
• The bug that was causing some versions of Internet Explorer 6 to not display the site's stylesheet
has been fixed
Confluence 1.0a2
New Features
• Shortcut links (CONF-195 & CONF-247) - shortcut links enable you to easily make links to any 'web
service' from within the syntax of a Confluence page. Simply specify your shortcut and the URL to
link to (eg "google", "http://www.google.com/search?q=$1") to add your own links. You could
use this to link directly to JIRA installations, Google, intranets, searches or anything that has a 'URI'
based interface.
• Revert page to a previous version (CONF-32) - revert to a previous version of any given page from
the list of previous versions.
• Forgot password function (CONF-88) - retrieve your password if you happen to have forgotten it
• Report: undefined pages (CONF-197) - list of all pages which are linked to from other pages, but not
defined.
• Report: orphaned pages (CONF-198) - shows all the pages which are never linked to (ie have
content but no way to get to them).
• Interstitial help page after creating a space (CONF-251)
• 'Notify me', and HTML/text email preferences, with HTML email content
• Links to non-exported pages are now maintained in exported PDFs (the links point back to the
online Confluence installation)
• Custom Radeox macros can now be used within Confluence - this enables you to write your own
macros to produce custom content
• XML import/export of a single space (CONF-199) - useful for porting spaces between installations
• XML import/export of a single page (CONF-200) - useful for creating pages automatically, or
sync'ing pages between installations.
• Many other minor fixes, improvements and performance tweaks
Confluence 1.0a3
New Features
Confluence 1.0b1
That's right - we finally got it out the door! cheers from around the room erupt as developers across in
the Atlassian offices crack open a beer.
New Features
• It's soooo much faster as we've implemented caching at multiple levels - trust me, it now flies in
development. Here's hoping it flies for you too. (For those with a development bent, turn on profiling
via the URL to see abeautiful profiling stack trace on stdout)
• The last login date is now tracked, pages and spaces changed since your last login are highlighted
in green (as these are presumably pages you want to view), you can see a diff of the currently
viewed page against the date you last logged in and there are various related reports of spaces/
pages changed since your last login.
• Parent/child page hierarchies have been implemented. You can specify the parent for any pages and
the ancestry is reflected in the breadcrumbs list. The full hierarchy is shown (including the current
page's position) on the Page Information screen, and there is a related macro to show the children
in various different types of trees (see the Notation Guide for details)
• Search has been completely overhauled - search now works across pages, comments and space
descriptions and the results now display descriptions with highlighted search terms (this is really
cool!)
• Page renaming and link refactoring now works across comments, space descriptions and pages -
neat!
• The Notation Guide has been significantly improved with more useful examples, a list of the
available macros and a tabbed interface. Also the edit/create pages now have a 'quick notation
guide' to the most commonly used operations
• There is a new 'Create Comment' permission - so that you can make spaces which are publicly
viewable/commentable, but not editable.
• The UI of the 'create link' and 'external link' links within a rendered page have been improved with
subtle icons
• Page comments now have a sexy icon of their own, and can be shown/hidden at will. You can also
permalink to any given comment and comments are fully indexed.
• Undefined and orphaned pages reports have been tightened significantly so that they now report
truly undefined/orphaned pages
• You can create a list of URLs ignored from external referrers - this is useful where your server is
known by multiple IP / domain name combinations, or you want to ignore all internal referrers
(Admin / General configuration)
• {color} macro to colour blocks of text
• Logging in to Confluence now takes you to your intended destination, not the Dashboard
• There is an option to choose whether the default link for a space goes to the space homepage or the
space summary (people internally and externally seem to be divided about which it should go to - so
you can choose for yourselves)
• You can now edit and add SMTP servers through the web interface
• The administration interface has been completely overhauled and tightened
• Added a Mail Queue administration page
• Added a View System Information page
• Added a pretty error page, and the ability to submit but reports (including exports) directly to us
• The permissions viewing and editing pages have been greatly simplified and improved across the
application
• Confluence now has a licensing system, so you will need a license key to evaluate (these can be
generated online as with JIRA).
• Image embedding can now include parameters (such as height, width, alignment etc) - see the
Notation Guide for details.
• https:// links are now treated just like ftp:// and http:// external links
• Various rendering bugs have been fixed.
• Many other minor fixes, improvements and performance tweaks
Confluence 1.0b2 was released on Friday January 16, 2004 with a major bug in its search indexing that
caused it to index pages that no longer existed. It was replaced by 1.0b3 the next Monday.
See also: Release Notes 1.0b3 and Issues Resolved for 1.0b3
The features listed on this page refer to Confluence version 1.0 beta1.
Content Management
• Content is organised into discrete spaces in which users can create and edit pages.
• Easy-to-learn, easy-to-read but powerful notation for designing pages and linking between them,
based on the popular textile markup.
• Arbitrary files can be attached to pages.
• Comments can be left on pages.
• Page templating allows rapid creation of boiler-plate pages.
• Pages can be organised into hierarchies.
Update Tracking
• Each page has a full change history, accessible as coloured diffs highlighting each change made.
• Simple Reports which pages have been updated since you last logged in.
• Email subscription informs you of pages that have been added or updated, or comments left.
• RSS feeds available for new and updated pages across the site, or in individual spaces.
Searching
• Full-text searching of all content, including pages, comments and space descriptions
Site Management
• Smart page-renaming updates links across the entire site, even in comments or space descriptions.
• Pages or spaces can be imported from plain text files, or exported to PDF or HTML.
• Simple backup and restore to XML files.
• Automatic daily backup feature.
• Reports of "orphaned" pages that exist but are not linked to, and of links that point to pages that do
not yet exist.
Support
• Confluence is under full-time development, with licensees entitled to a year of free updates.
• Atlassian's Legendary Service.
Confluence 1.0b3
1.0b3 was released on January 19th, 2004. It replaces the short-lived 1.0b2 release, after 1.0b2
managed to escape into the wild with a bug in the search index that made it see pages that weren't there
any more. Since 1.0b2 only existed for one weekend, the release-notes for both versions have been
folded into a single document.
This is a massive release. Over 90 issues (new features, improvements and bug-fixes) were resolved
between beta-1 and beta-3, with even more improvements made below the issue-tracking radar.
Contents
1. New Features
2. New Macros
3. Improvements
4. Notable Bug-fixes
5. Outstanding Issues
New Features
Search Attachments
Attachments are now indexed for searching just like any other content in the Confluence space. Alongside
text, HTML and XML attachments, Confluence will also index Word, RTF and PDF documents.
The site administrators can now customise the colour-scheme of the Confluence installation. More
advanced configuration can be done by editing the site's templates through a web interface, changing the
appearance of the whole site. See Customising Confluence for examples and information.
Site Homepage
The site administrator can now set the site homepage for users who have not logged in: choosing from
either the dashboard (the default behaviour in beta1 and before), or any of the Space homepages within
the site.
Users who have logged in can choose their own site homepage in their user profile.
You can subscribe to all new comments added to a space using an RSS newsreader. (The link to the RSS
feed can be found on the Space Summary page)
Emoticons
New Macros
• {include} – include the contents of one Confluence page within another (see (outdated) Include
Page Macro for more details)
• {include-html} – include the contents of an HTML document within a Confluence page (turned off by
default. See Enabling the html-include Macro for more information)
• {rss} – include an external RSS feed (see (outdated) RSS Feed Macro for details and example)
• {search} – include the results of a Confluence search (see (outdated) Search Macro for details and
example)
• {jiraissues} – integrate Jira issue reports with your Confluence site (see (outdated) JIRA Issues
Macro for details and example)
Improvements
• Users' login names and full names are indexed for searching
• Users' profiles may now be longer than 255 characters, and are also indexed for searching
• Usernames are no longer case-sensitive
• Anonymous contributions are clearly labeled
• Users are warned if they are editing or commenting without having logged in
• Notification emails now link to the appropriate "diff" page, so you can quickly see what has changed
• Page diffs now highlight precisely what changed within each line: very useful when just one or two
words change in a long paragraph
• Lists of child pages and links are sorted alphabetically
• Long lists of pages or search results are paginated
• Shortcut links can be given different link text in the same way as other links (e.g. [Search for
Confluence on Google|confluence@google])
• Incoming links and "hot referrers" are listed in the sidebar of the page view
• Child pages are listed below the page contents in the page view
Notable Bug-fixes
• You no longer get the old page (or don't see the comment) immediately after editing or commenting
on a page CONF-453
• Persistent login cookies no longer conflict with a JIRA installation on the same server CONF-440
• Persistent login cookies no longer fail for users with certain characters in their username CONF-387
• Notification emails no longer send out garbage for anonymous changes. CONF-421
• Users who are not logged in no longer see strange table titles CONF-422
• And many more....
Outstanding Issues
• You should restart Confluence immediately after finishing the initial setup steps, to avoid data loss
CONF-493
• New-lines may not be drawn if the next line starts with whitespace CONF-475
• Emoticons are rendered inside {noformat} blocks CONF-502
• If you put a {children} macro after an {include} macro, it will list the children of the included page.
CONF-504
Confluence 1.0b4
To belatedly ring in the Year of the Code-Monkey, it's time for Confluence 1.0 beta 4. We've had some
great feedback on the last few betas, thanks to everyone for submitting bugs, and contributing to the
forums and discussion space.
Contents
1. FatCow
2. New Features
3. New Macros
4. Improvements
5. Notable Bug-fixes
6. Outstanding Issues
Atlassian FatCow
Along with 1.0b4, we're also releasing FatCow: Functional Acceptance Testing for the Confluence Wiki.
Styled after Ward Cunningham's FIT and Bob Martin's Fitnesse, FatCow allows you to define web-based
acceptance tests in wiki notation, and then run them from inside Confluence. Here's a tutorial showing
how to write a quick FatCow test suite that makes sure Confluence shows up on Google.
FatCow is Open Source, and also serves as example code for anyone who wants to extend Confluence by
writing their own macros (something that we'll be looking to make easier in future releases).
New Features
Blog Posts
Each space can now host a "blog" of pages that are organised by date, rather than just by title. This is
pretty useful if you want to attach some kind of updating news to a space. The "create blog post" button
can be found on the right-hand toolbar.
Blogging support is pretty basic right now: you can create posts, and you can include the most recent
posts in a page using the {blog-posts} macro. Rest assured, we'll be piling on the features in the next
few releases.
A much requested feature, our newest refactoring lets you move pages cleanly from one space to
another. We're using this already to maintain a private space where we stage documentation waiting to
be transferred to the main documentation space.
You can now change the text in the site description that appears on the user's dashboard: somewhere to
put welcome messages or MOTDs. And, of course, it understands Confluence markup.
#includePage("Page") Velocimacro
For the decorator-editors, you can use this render the contents of a page anywhere inside a decorator.
The page has to be in the space that the user is looking at, and if the page does not exist, nothing will be
rendered.
New Macros
Notable Bug-fixes
• Spurious error message about editing a stale version of a page have been squashed.
• No longer crashes when you add a user to certain groups.
• Some database queries have been rewritten to work around the fact that MySQL doesn't understand
sub-selects.
• Diffs more reliably highlight changed words
• Several minor rendering problems to do with deeply nested lists have been fixed.
• and many more...
Outstanding Issues
• You should restart Confluence immediately after finishing the initial setup steps, to avoid data loss
CONF-493
• New-lines may not be drawn if the next line starts with whitespace CONF-475
• Emoticons are rendered inside {noformat} blocks CONF-502
Confluence 1.0rc1
It's Friday again, and that means it's time for us to release Murray; Confluence 1.0 Release Candidate 1.
RC1 marks the start of the feature-freeze as we plunge headfirst towards a stable 1.0 release. From now
until 1.0-final we will be concentrating on fixing up the remaining bugs and polishing the interface. We
are hoping that we won't need to send out a second release candidate, but we can't really make any
promises until we've had a chance to go through the inevitable deluge of new issues that will follow this
release.
Of course, this means that there are features you want to see in Confluence that won't make it into 1.0-
final. Keep those ideas and suggestions coming. Confluence isn't going to stop at 1.0 – we just had to
draw a line somewhere or we'd end up perpetually in beta. We have no plans to slow down development
after the first major release. Your Confluence licence includes a year of upgrades, and if you think
Confluence is way cool now, it's just going to get better.
As always, before upgrading an existing Confluence installation, be sure to back up your data.
As you can see below, we've been busy the last two weeks. A hard-earned thirst needs a good cold beer.
Contents
1. New Features
2. New Macros
3. Improvements
4. Notable Bug-fixes
5. Outstanding Issues
6. Database Changes from Beta4
New Features
Remote API
Confluence can now be browsed and edited remotely via SOAP or XML-RPC. There are more details of the
XML-RPC API here, while the SOAP WSDL can be downloaded from $your_confluence_root$/rpc/soap/
confluenceservice-v1.wsdl. Throwing together a GUI client for Confluence is now pretty easy, so feel
free to embed Confluence support into your favourite editor, web browser or IDE.
Blogging Enhancements
The sketchy blogging support from Beta4 has been upgraded and overhauled. Enhancements include:
• The look and feel of blog pages has been greatly improved
• A "recent blog posts" list available from the Space Summary page
• Daily and monthly views for blog posts
• Blog posts can now be edited and deleted
• You can now link to blog posts using the internal link syntax. Blog posts are addressed by their
posting-date and title, like so: [SPACEKEY:/2004/01/03/Blog Post Title]
• You can link to the daily views, too: [SPACEKEY:/2004/01/03/]
• RSS feeds are available for new blog posts, both globally (from the dashboard), and for each space
(from the space summary page)
Also, anonymous users are no longer allowed to post blog entries. We couldn't really think of a use-case
where anonymous blog-posts would be wanted, but if you can, let us know!
With any knowledge-sharing application, it's important to keep informed as to what has changed. One
way to do this is by subscribing to any of the RSS feeds offered by Confluence. Another is to have
1. Each day, Confluence can email you a summary of any changes that have been made to the site in
the past 24 hours. You can activate this feature in your user preferences.
2. You can subscribe to "watch" a page from the option in the right-hand operations menu. Whenever
the page is modified, commented on, or a new attachment is added, you will receive an email. When
you no longer want to watch the page, you can click the icon again to unsubscribe.
3. You can subscribe to watch an entire space from the option on the space summary page. This
subscribes you to all pages in that space, and also notifies you when new pages are created.
Each user can now also choose whether or not they will be notified of changes they make themselves.
Trackbacks
While Confluence has always tracked links between pages within the Confluence site, it now has a way to
track links to and from external sites: the Trackback API. In this way, a Confluence page can be informed
when another site has mentioned it, and inform other sites that it has linked to them.
We have implemented the Trackback and Trackback auto-discovery APIs across pages and blog-posts.
Trackback is a widely implemented API that allows web pages to notify each other of links. You can enable
(or disable) trackbacks from the Confluence general administration page.
When Trackbacks are enabled, each Page and Blog Post within Confluence is set up to receive trackback
pings, and contains the auto-discovery code to allow clients to automatically find out how to send those
pings. Trackbacks that are received are listed in the right-hand sidebar of the page.
Also when Trackbacks are enabled, Confluence will perform auto-discovery on each outgoing link from a
page to see if the destination is equipped to receive trackbacks, and send its own trackback ping.
Look forward to future versions of Confluence making very interesting use of this feature.
The template-- and colour-scheme editing features that were available on a global basis in previous
versions of Confluence can now be configured separately for each space, allowing you to apply a different
look and feel to the various spaces within your Confluence site.
New Macros
• {panel} macro allows you to draw a shaded box containing some content
Improvements
• Import and Export should now be much faster, and use significantly less memory
• The user browser now has a search function, to make it possible to manage large numbers of users
effectively
• Incoming links are no longer displayed on a page if the user is unable to view the page being linked
from
• The {anchor}, {blog-posts}, {index} and {quote} macros are now documented properly.
• You can escape smileys by putting a backslash before their last character, to cause them not to be
rendered as images :)
• You can now link to peoples' user profile pages with [~username] (e.g. Charles Miller)
• You can now link to space homepages with [SPACEKEY:] (e.g. Test Space)
• mailto: links have a nifty icon: user@example.com
• The History popup now tracks your visits to blog posts, space summaries and user profile pages
• Recent changes listings on the dashboard, user profile and space summary pages now includes
changes to all content, not just pages.
• New Emoticons! (well, icons really)
• Added HTML headers to detect and prevent RSS, HTML-Include and FatCow macros from being
made to loop in on themselves. CONF-525
• The {anchor} macro, and [DOCPRIV:null] links now work as advertised. CONF-616, CONF-605
• Fixed a divide-by-zero error in page diffs CONF-584
• Included javax.transaction libraries with release, to allow the WAR to run under Tomcat 5
CONF-613
• And many more rendering and stability fixes...
Outstanding Issues
New Tables
TRACKBACK and NOTIFICATION tables were introduced. These tables should be generated automatically
when you first start RC1.
The "not null" constraint was removed from the DESTPAGETITLE column of the LINKS table. Consult your
database documentation on how to alter your database for this change. For example:
After a week of frantic bug-fixing, we have released Confluence 1.0 Release Candidate 2. Thanks
everyone for reporting all the bugs they found in RC1. While we really hope you'll keep reporting anything
you find that doesn't work, we're also hoping that there's a lot less to report now.
We have released RC2 because it's a lot more stable than RC1. We know a lot of you are already using
Confluence in some kind of production capacity, and we don't want to keep you waiting for the important
fixes that we put in this week.
Since we're in the middle of a feature freeze, there obviously aren't any new major features in this
release, but there are a number of incremental improvements, and a lot of fixes.
WARNING
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.0rc1, do not perform a backup of your data from within
Confluence. There was a serious bug with RC1 that caused user permissions to be corrupted during data
exports.
There have been no database changes between RC1 and RC2, so you should simply be able to run RC2
against your existing data without performing a backup/restore.
If you wish to back your data up safely before the upgrade, you will need to do so manually: shut
down Confluence, make a copy of your Confluence home directory (as defined in confluence-
init.properties, and if you are storing your data in something other than HSQL, use your database's
native backup procedure.
Contents
1. Improvements
2. Other Bug-fixes
3. Outstanding Issues
Improvements
Notable Bug-fixes
Stability
We've done a lot of work tracking down the source of any exception and page error that has been
reported to us, and fixing their causes. We've also made one or two improvements to the error reporting
page, but we're hoping you won't see it nearly as often (if at all) any more.
Page Templates
The creation, editing and deletion of page templates should now be a lot more reliable and provide a
smoother user experience.
• You no longer have to restart Confluence after its initial setup CONF-493
• Performing a full data export no longer corrupts users' group membership data. CONF-645
• You can now link to profiles of users with an @ symbol in their usernames CONF-639
• Trying to create a page with illegal characters in its name no longer loses your page content on
some browsers. CONF-713
• Trackback pings are now sent for URLs that are not surrounded by square brackets CONF-708
• And, of course, many more...
Outstanding Issues
The two major areas we still need to work on are the PDF export and the use of non-ASCII characters in
pages (especially page titles). Handling of both are much better than they were a week ago, but there's
still some work to do before they're completely reliable.
Confluence 1.0rc5
It's time to release Confluence 1.0rc5 into the wild: it's the fourth Release Candidate since last Friday,
and we're definitely getting close here. The last two release-candidates did not have their own release-
notes, so these notes will also include things that were fixed for those versions.
Contents
1. New Features
2. New Macros
3. Improvements
4. Notable Bug-fixes
5. Outstanding Issues
New Features
In keeping with our promise to not add any features during the Release Candidate process, we have been
Template Preview
Page templates have been given an overhaul: when filling in your template variables, you are presented
with a template of the rendered page, with input fields where the variables will be inserted. If you have
the same variable used in several places, the form will take care of keeping them all in synch.
Page Redirection
New Macros
Improvements
Notable Bug-fixes
Since RC2
• Links between pages now work when you have a context path other than / (oops!)
• The daily report email is no longer sent every minute (oops!)
• You can no longer download attachments without being logged in (OOPS!)
• Search results no longer highlight words that were terms in previous searches
Since RC3
Since RC4
• Removing a user no longer causes their notifications to hang around and crash things
• Removing a blog post works, too
• Many fixes to PDF rendering and exporting
• Many fixes to handling of Latin character set (See outstanding issues below)
Plus, of course, innumerable fixed to annoying crashing bugs across all three releases.
Outstanding Issues
We've tested creating pages with non-ASCII titles and content across several different browsers and
several different operating systems, and they seem to be working reliably now... except on Resin. This
will be quite noticeable since confluence.atlassian.com itself is running under Resin, but we have so far
been unable to come up with a solution that works on this application server.
For users who need this functionality, we suggest running under Tomcat.
• On MySQL, the "orphaned pages" report may include the space's homepage CONF-766
• Combining block macros with lists is dangerous CONF-756
• Under some circumstances, paragraph tags will not be closed CONF-746
Confluence 1.0rc6
Confluence 1.0rc6 fixes more bugs. Lots of them. There aren't many new and interesting features to
report, although we have implemented the much-requested ability to mask email addresses and prevent
public signup. Mostly, we've been toiling away fixing the lots of little problems that are getting in the way
of us calling Confluence truly worthy of the 1.0 label.
Contents
1. New Features
2. New Macros
3. Improvements
4. Notable Bug-fixes
5. Outstanding Issues
New Features
In private mode, the only way to add users to Confluence is through the administrative interface: users
can not sign up on their own. This way, you can prevent random passers-by from signing on to your
Confluence installation. The site administrator can configure this in the general administration settings.
Another much-requested feature, the site administrator has three options for email-address privacy:
• Public: just like pre-rc6, users email addresses are displayed publicly.
• Masked: email addresses are still displayed publicly, but masked in such a way to make it harder for
spam-bots to harvest them.
• Private: only site administrators can see users' email addresses.
Administrators should be aware that even in private mode, anyone in the confluence-admin group will
still be listed (with their email address) on the administrators page, although their addresses will be
masked.
For sites with both a Confluence and a JIRA installation, Confluence can be set up to delegate its user-
management to JIRA. You can find detailed instructions here.
• The {html} will allow you to insert arbitrary HTML code into a page. This macro is turned off by
default, as it is a security-risk on public systems. We only recommend you enable it on private or
intranet-based Confluence installations where you trust your users not to write malicious HTML
code. Here's a trivial example of its use:
\{html\}
<p>This HTML is <b>inserted</b> into the page</p>
\{html\}
• The {junitreport} macro has an option: "reportdetails=failuresonly" that will cause it to only
show details of tests that have failed. For example: {junitreport:directory=file:///var/tests|
reportdetail=failuresonly}
Improvements
• Users are now taken to their preferred homepage rather than the dashboard after logging in
• Text-fields in a template are disabled during preview and viewing
• Orphaned and Undefined page reports are now paginated
• Macros such as {code} or {noformat} are now made part of a list if they are placed adjacent to
them
Notable Bug-fixes
Outstanding Issues
If you are running Confluence against MySQL using Confluence's built-in datasource, the connection with
the database server may be lost after long periods of inactivity. We are pretty sure we have a fix for this,
The good news is that if we are right, it will only require a quick edit of your configuration file to
implement the fix. Further announcements will be made both on confluence.atlassian.com, and the
confluence-user mailing-list.
In the meantime, the workaround is to not use Confluence's built-in datasource, but to configure
Confluence to use your application-server's JNDI datasources instead. Instructions for doing this with
Tomcat can be found here, and if you need more help, don't hesitate to contact us at confluence-
support@atlassian.com.
We've tested creating pages with non-ASCII titles and content across several different browsers and
several different operating systems, and they seem to be working reliably now... except on Resin. This
will be quite noticeable since confluence.atlassian.com itself is running under Resin, but we have so far
been unable to come up with a solution that works on this application server.
For users who need this functionality, we suggest running under Tomcat.
Also..
• On MySQL, the "orphaned pages" report may include the space's homepage CONF-766
• You can create a link to a page with an illegal title: prompting the user to create a page that can not
exist CONF-810
• Trackbacks are not sent for shortcut links CONF-888
Confluence 1.1 is the first major update to Confluence. It's faster, more reliable, and packed with new
features. Thanks to our policy of a year's free upgrades, any current Confluence customer will be able to
upgrade to 1.1 at no cost.
Current customers, or new users who wish to try out Confluence for 30 days can download either
the standalone or WAR distributions from the Atlassian website: http://www.atlassian.com/software/
confluence
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
• Users who have enabled external user-management by customising their osuser.xml file will need
to read this document also.
• Users who have used MySQL or Postgresql with Confluence 1.0 should read this document which
explains how to get rid of any extraneous triggers or indexes that might have been created.
Contents
1. New Features
2. New Macros
3. Improvements
4. Notable Bug-fixes
5. Outstanding Issues
New Features
Macro Management
The biggest Nymboida new feature from an end user point of view is going to be the rewritten macro
support.
Management - You can now enable and disable macros from this convenient (and very attractive)
console. Macros are now grouped into libraries to make the management and creation of related macros
simpler. Libraries can be installed, activated or deactivated as a single entity.
User Macros - We've also had a lot of requests from users for simple formatting macros: people who
wanted their code snippets or notes to be formated in a certain way. Confluence 1.1 contains a simple
way for administrators to create new macros from within the application without a restart: defining a
template that the macro will apply to its arguments or content. User macros are very handy for providing
consistent formatting and layouts across your pages.
Custom Macros - Installation of new macro libraries is a breeze: simply drop the library .jar file inside
the web application, restart Confluence, and your new macros will appear in the management console.
Confluence 1.1 also includes a custom macro toolkit (with Task List example shown below) to help users
build their own complex macros easily using Java.
More information:
Versioning - The number one feature request for Confluence 1.0 was versioned attachments. You ask, we
deliver! Confluence can now have multiple versions of the same file attached to a page. It will keep a
history of different versions of attachments, expandable dynamically.
Comments - Each attachment can now be accompanied with a comment describing why it is there,
what it's about or the reason for it being attached. This is useful for tracking the differences between
attachment versions, as well as for informing users as to why they should be interested in a particular
file.
WebDAV - You can configure Confluence to store attachments in an external WebDAV server. This
allows companies with an existing WebDAV infrastructure to give users alternative ways of accessing
attachments and attaching files to Confluence pages.
• Exporting pages and spaces to PDF should be a great deal more reliable now. Whereas in Confluence
1.0, the export was likely to fail if the pages contained questionable markup, we now dynamically
clean up each page before we export it.
• You can choose whether or not page comments are exported. Often you want to exclude comments
if you want to send out a PDF of a page or publish a space as a website.
• The templates used to publish pages and spaces to HTML can be customised on a global and per-
space basis. This makes it easy to publish a static website from the contents of a Confluence space:
customise your templates, choose which pages to export, and voila.
The templates used to display blog posts (both individually and in lists) can be edited either globally, or
on a per-space basis, in the same way as the site's main decorators are editable. Also, the interface for
editing templates has improved and will continue to do so in future releases.
Page Locking
If you want to prevent another user from editing, deleting or renaming a page, you can now lock it.
You may want to do this because certain pages in an otherwise public space (for example, front pages,
disclaimers or copyright notices) must remain un-edited, or just because you're working on the page and
don't want anyone else to interfere just yet.
Locking a page restricts editing to a single user (yourself), or members of a particular group. Anyone with
the space administrative permission can override or delete a lock.
We have made a concerted attack on the various issues that were making Confluence unreliable on
Oracle and Weblogic, and we're pleased to report that both have been running just fine in testing. Most
importantly, the bug that was preventing pages being saved to Oracle when they were over 4Kb in length
has been fixed.
Confluence already searches across attached Word, PDF and RTF documents, XML, HTML and any plain
text file. This search support has now been expanded in Nymboida to include searching and indexing of
all text within Microsoft Powerpoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets.
TinyURL
Every page has a unique, short URL displayed at the top of its Page Information page. This makes it
easier to send colleague's the URLs for pages with long titles via email, instant message or IRC.
New
• {excerpt} allows you to mark a portion of the page as its "excerpt". This has no effect on the
page itself, but other macros (such as {blog-posts} and {children}) can use the excerpt as a short
summary of the content of the page.
• {excerpt-include} includes one page's excerpt in another page.
Improved
• {code} macro supports coloured highlighting for several more languages: JavaScript, ActionScript,
XML and SQL.
• {code} macro can have its title and border customised in the same way as the {panel} macro
• {blog-posts} takes an optional time parameter to indicate how far back it should look for blog
posts. For example, {blog-posts:time=7d} will show all blog-posts within the last seven days
• {blog-posts} takes an optional content parameter to change the way the blog-posts are displayed.
content=excerpts displays excerpts instead of the full content of the blog entry (using the
{excerpt} macro if available, otherwise extracting the first few hundred characters of the post).
content=titles displays the entries as a list of titles.
• {children} takes an optional excerpts=true parameter: if any of the children have an excerpt
available, the first line will be displayed in the list.
Improvements
Many improvements have been made to the Confluence markup parser, fixing niggling inconsistencies,
and allowing many more combinations of effects. If you want to produce something like the following,
you can:
Name Value
Some code
public static void main(String[] args)
{
System.out.println("Hello World");
}
A list • Item 1
• Item 2
• Item 3
• Item 4
A panel
I like cheese
• Brie
• Camembert
• Gruyere
• Cheddar
• You can specify a link title (which appears in the mouse-over tooltip) by adding another section to
the link: [Link Body Text|Page Name|Link Title]
• [//foo/bar/baz.html] will create a relative URL link to /foo/bar/baz.html on the same server as
Confluence is running
• file: URL links work
• UNC-style links: [\\SERVER\share\directory\file.doc] will create a file:// link to the file on an
external share
Note: Some web browsers (specifically Mozilla) consider file: URLs to be a security hazard, and do not
follow them.
Here's the quick fire version of some of the other improvements we've made in this release:
• You can resize the recent changes lists on the dashboard and space summary pages. This change is
persisted in your user preferences.
• UI state (whether comments or attachments are open, size of recent changes lists) persists between
sessions for registered users.
• The maximum attachment size can be configured from the General Configuration administration
page.
• Going to http://yoursite.example.com/display now brings up a list of spaces instead of an error
page.
• The display of the space summary page is significantly faster.
• Newly created users don't show up on the dashboard recent changes list unless they edit their
profiles.
• The word "Confluence" has been moved to the end of page titles instead of the beginning, making
them easier to distinguish in tabs and bookmarks.
• There are more ways to navigate to the "recent blog posts" page for a space.
• Removing a user is significantly faster.
• Headings in pages are automatically turned into anchors with the same name.
• Creating a space now creates an index page as well as a home-page.
Notable Bug-fixes
It's hard to know where to start. We've fixed a lot of bugs across the whole application. If you want to
know what's been fixed, you're probably best off looking for yourself.
Two areas, however, have been improved enough to deserve special mention.
• PDF Export - as mentioned above, we've made the PDF export much, much more reliable than it
once was. Where before a page or space may have confused the PDF converter into not working, it
should now be able to handle any markup you throw up at it.
• International characters - Many issues related to the use of non-ASCII characters in page titles,
links, page contents and RSS feeds have been resolved since Confluence 1.0. Our users in non-
English-speaking countries should find Confluence a much more pleasant and seamless experience
now than they may have before.
Confluence 1.1.1 is a maintenance release that fixes some bugs regarding attachments, page links and
notifications. Remember, a Confluence license entitles you to a year of upgrades, and this upgrade along
with future updates will be free of charge.
This release mainly fixes the bugs discovered in our recent 1.1 release. The major issues resolved are
listed below, or you can see the full list here. As some of the issues resolved have a significant impact on
the user experience of Confluence, we recommend that anyone currently running 1.1 upgrade to 1.1.1.
Upgrade Procedure
To avoid the possibility of data-loss, you should back up your ConfluenceHome directory and your
database before upgrading, and perform a full backup from within the application.
Changes in 1.1.1
Attachment fixes
• Attachment versioning introduced a new table in Confluence that had a column whose name
conflicted with some databases like Sybase
• Links to older version of attachments could not be accessed if the webapp was deployed with a
context path
• Attaching files that contained '+' and '&' symbols caused certain pages in Confluence to break
Notification fixes
Users opting to receive html formatted email received emails with the correct subject but no content. In
addition, the "View Changes" link in the daily change email was broken. These are now fixed.
An upgrade to an email component used in Confluence in 1.1, caused an error to be displayed when users
attempted to modify their email server settings. An upgrade has been added in 1.1.1 that will fix this
problem to save users from having to perform the fix manually.
Spaces labelled with names containing an '&' symbol could not be exported to PDF. This has been fixed.
The notation for a horizontal ruler was changed to five dashes (up from 4) in 1.1. This stopped the ruler
from showing. This has been changed back in 1.1.1.
This fixes an upgrade problem in 1.1.1 where users attemtping to upgrade from 1.0.x directly to 1.1.1
encountered an "Upgrade Failed" error. Therefore, if you are still using a version older than 1.1, and am
planning to upgrade, please upgrade to 1.1.2 to avoid this problem.
If you have already upgraded to 1.1.1 from 1.0.3a and cannot start Confluence due to the upgrade error,
simply download 1.1.2 and upgrade to it. This should fix the problem.
If you have already upgraded successfully to 1.1.1 from 1.1 then you may safely ignore this upgrade.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
• Users who have enabled external user-management by customising their osuser.xml file will need
to read this document also.
• Users who have used MySQL or Postgresql with Confluence 1.0 should read this document which
explains how to get rid of any extraneous triggers or indexes that might have been created.
Atlassian is proud to present Confluence 1.2, otherwise known as Swan, to the world. Existing customers
who wish to upgrade, or new users who wish to try out Confluence for 30 days can download either
the standalone or WAR distributions from the Atlassian website: http://www.atlassian.com/software/
confluence
Swan is the second major update to Confluence, and once again all existing customers can upgrade
for free, thanks to the provision for one year of free upgrades in your license. You will find that Swan
contains significant new features in the areas of user management, search and space browsing, as well
as the usual raft of enhancements, bug fixes and things we just couldn't resist throwing in at the last
minute.
In all, 109 issues were resolved between 1.1.2 and 1.2. You can see the full list here: Issues Resolved for
1.2
Looking towards the future, we are going to attempt to increase the frequency of releases. While having
one release every three months makes for impressively long release notes, it also means that customers
are often left waiting longer than might be necessary for important enhancements or bug-fixes.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
You will need to reindex your site after upgrading to enable some of the new site search features. You can
do this from the "Rebuild Search Index" link on the Administration Console.
Site administrators upgrading from 1.1.2 or earlier should take particular note of the changes to global
and space permissions. Confluence should automatically upgrade old permissions to the new scheme
when upgrading from or importing data from earlier versions, but it is a good idea to check that your
spaces are still secure and accessible after the upgrade, just in case.
Users upgrading directly from 1.0.3a should also read the Nymboida Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 1.0 -> 1.1 upgrade.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
3. Notable Bug-fixes
New Features
The old "list pages" screen has been enhanced, almost to the point of being unrecogniseable. In its place,
we now offer three ways to browse the contents of a space.
The Alphabetical View looks like the "list pages" screen from 1.1 and earlier, but it has been enhanced to
allow you to find pages quickly by the first letter of their title.
The Search View presents Swan's enhanced search interface, already focused on the space you are
looking at.
You can now display a thumbnail of any image attached to a page. Clicking on the thumbnail will pop up a
window containing the full-sized image. For example, the nice picture of the waterfall from my holiday in
California was generated by the following wiki-markup.
!waterfall.jpg|align=right thumbnail!
In addition, the {gallery} macro will create a thumbnail gallery of all the images that are attached to
the page the macro is included in. You can see an example of this macro in action here: Thumbnail and
Gallery Example.
The maximum sizes for thumbnails are configured in the General Configuration section of the
Administrative Console.
Threaded Comments
Bowing to public demand, we have added the ability to arrange comments by thread: users may respond
to a particular comment, and the comments will be arranged in accordance with who responded to what.
The default is still for comments to be presented as a flat list, but you can enable comment-threading in
the General Configuration section of the Administrative Console.
Enhanced Search
The site-search functionality of Confluence has been enhanced, both subtly behind the scenes, and quite
obviously in front of them.
Behind the scenes, we now index more information such as attachment comments and filenames.
We have improved the indexing of Powerpoint presentations so that more text is extracted from the
Powerpoint file. We have also tweaked the ranking algorithms behind the search so that you are more
likely to find the page (space, comment, blog post, attachment, user...) you are looking for.
More obviously, we have given the user a lot more control over searching with an intuitive user interface
that allows you to limit searches by space, type of content, or date last modified, and to group search
results by type and space.
The {search} macro has also been updated to take advantage of the new search features (the options
are described more fully in the notation guide linked from Confluence's edit page):
{search:query=Confluence|maxLimit=5|spacekey=DISC|type=page}
Two of the biggest issues users have been having with permissions in Confluence were:
Both of these issues have been fixed in Swan, but it has involved a slight change in the way permissions
are checked. This should not be a problem for new Confluence users: the new system is easier to use
than the old,. However, if you are upgrading from 1.1.2 or earlier, you should read this document to see
what's different.
Here's the quick fire version of some of the other improvements we've made in this release:
Notable Bug-fixes
• Exports created on Windows can now be imported on Unix-like operating systems without having to
fix the path separators
• Hyphens in page headings or anchors will no longer render strangely
• Restoring a backup during setup now properly generates the search indexes
• Page "short links" now respect the configured site URL, regardless of which URL the user is
accessing the site from
• Strange Powerpoint files no longer choke the indexer
• Users with Admin privileges can now see the link to the Administration Console without being in the
'confluence-administrators' superuser group
• Space administrators can modify space templates without having global administrator privileges.
• User macros are now lower-cased by default
• It is now possible to change the case of a page title by renaming the page
For Swan, changes were made to the way Confluence manages and checks permissions. This document
is a guide for anyone migrating from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier describing why the changes were made,
and what this means to existing Confluence installations.
Why Change?
1. Fix a significant problem whereby users with external user management enabled could not also
enable Confluence anonymous access without blowing out their 25-user workgroup license.
2. Make the user interface for assigning and viewing permissions easier to use and understand.
What Changed?
In Confluence 1.1.3, there was an "Anyone" user, who represented anyone using the system, whether
logged in or not.
This user was the source of the licensing problem, and no longer exists in Confluence 1.2
Confluence 1.2 has explicit permissions for anonymous users. These permissions are only granted to
users who are not logged in.
There is nothing stopping an administrator granting some permission to anonymous users, but not
granting it to logged-in users. This results in the slightly bizarre possibility that a user might be able to
do more before logging in than they can after. Luckily, this is a pretty easy situation for administrators to
avoid.
Enabling anonymous access has no effect on Confluence's user count for licensing purposes.
The roles of the "Use Confluence" and "View Space" permissions have been expanded so that now they
are required permissions before a user or group can be granted any more rights.
Before a user has access to anything in the Confluence server, they must first have "Use Confluence"
permission, and likewise before a user has access of any kind to a space, they must first have the "View
Space" permission.
For licensing purposes, your number of users is equivalent to the number of non-anonymous users with
the "Use Confluence" guard permission.
Migrating Automatically
When you upgrade from Confluence 1.1, or when you restore a backup created in 1.1 into Confluence
1.2, an upgrade task will run to automatically migrate your permissions to the new scheme, while
keeping them consistent with your 1.1 security settings. The task will make the following changes:
• All "Anyone" permissions will be converted into two separate permissions: one for Anonymous
access, and one for the confluence-users group. (If the confluence-users group does not exist,
this step will be skipped)
• Any user or group with some global or space permission will also be granted the equivalent guard
permission.
After starting up with the new version of Confluence, we suggest that you check that the permissions
have migrated successfully. While we have tested the migration code, maintaining your site's security is
important enough to warrant a double-check, just in case.
If the automatic migration does not complete successfully, which would most likely happen if you have
removed the "confluence-users" group, you will need to perform the above steps manually, through the
user administration interface.
Confluence 1.2.1 is a maintenance release that fixes some bugs that users may have encountered using
Confluence 1.2. It incorporates improvements to performance for large Confluence installations, and
fixes bugs related to the remote API, over-use of disk space, and a few annoying errors users were
experiencing when setting up a new Confluence instance.
The issues resolved below are all either fixes to problems that have effected small numbers of users, or
improve areas of Confluence that may not be used in your installation. As such, we recommend you read
through the release notes and decide whether this upgrade is necessary.
If 1.2 is working fine, and none of the issues below are bothering you, there is no need to upgrade.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Changes in 1.2.1
• getBlogEntries() will no longer erroneously return SQL Timestamps instead of date objects —
CONF-1756)
• getPage() will now successfully retrieve a previous page version — CONF-1721
• renderContent() can now successfully render a page containing the {blog-posts} macro —
CONF-1717
Setup Fixes
• Some users were encountering the following error during setup: "Unable to store Trigger with name:
'backupTrigger' and group: 'DEFAULT', because one already exists with this identification." This
should no longer occur — CONF-1760
• Some users were encountering a NullPointerException in
org.apache.lucene.store.FSDirectory.create() during setup when connecting to an external
datasource. This should no longer occur — CONF-1767
• Installations with large search indexes will no longer experience a performance degredation when
saving content — CONF-1759
• Backups will no longer leave a redundant exploded copy of the files being backed up in the temp
directory — CONF-1752
• Deleting a space was not deleting its attachments from the confluence home directory. This is now
fixed — CONF-1765
• Thumbnails are now stored in their own directory, so they won't be included unnecessarily in
backups — CONF-1785
• Confluence now generates significantly higher-quality image thumbnails (Thanks to Mike Aizatsky
for the tip) — CONF-1725
Unless you are running JDK 5.0 (which we do not recommend as it is still in pre-release), this
improvement will only be visible if you are running Confluence on Mac OS X
• URLs longer than 255 characters will no longer cause an exception when saving a page —
CONF-1743
• Pages with titles containing quotes no longer break PDF exports — CONF-1719
• Internet Explorer 6 SP2 will no longer corrupt zip-files downloaded from Confluence — CONF-1669
Confluence 1.2.2 is a maintenance release that fixes some bugs that users may have encountered using
Confluence 1.2 and 1.2.1. It fixes problems with attachment downloading, text file imports and text-only
emails.
Confluence 1.2.2 includes a fix for CONF-1810. This bug will cause serious problems for anyone who
attaches multiple versions of the same file to a Confluence page, corrupting subsequent downloads.
As such, Confluence 1.2.2 is a recommended upgrade for anyone running 1.2 or 1.2.1.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or 1.2.1, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Changes in 1.2.2
• The correct file size will now be stored for multiple versions of the same attachment, fixing a serious
download corruption bug – CONF-1810
• Long {excerpt} blocks no longer overrun their database field – CONF-1705
• The {code} macro will no longer garble XML – CONF-1829
• Page diffs now escape HTML tags correctly – CONF-1830
• Fixed Postgresql error when you try to import text files that contain the nul (\0) character –
CONF-1739
• "New Blog Post" icon in Page Operations URL now goes to the correct URL – CONF-1848
• "Next" link at the bottom of the alphabetical page listing now works – CONF-1797
• Text-formatted Confluence daily emails are now sent as text – CONF-1724
• The search input box on the "404 Not Found" page has been fixed – CONF-1800
Confluence 1.2.3 is a maintenance release that fixes some bugs that users may have encountered using
the 1.2 series of Confluence. It fixes problems with Oracle support on Weblogic, thumbnail display, errors
moving pages between spaces.
The issues resolved below are all either fixes to problems that have effected small numbers of users, or
improve areas of Confluence that may not be used in your installation. As such, we recommend you read
through the release notes and decide whether this upgrade is necessary.
Of particular note should be CONF-1911 which might effect customers trying to use Confluence with
Oracle under Weblogic, and CONF-1914, a security issue where users may determine the names of
attachments that they can not access.
If Confluence 1.2.2 is working fine for you, feel free to stick with it.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2 or higher, you
can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.1.2 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.2 release notes.
Changes in 1.2.3
Atlassian Software is proud to present Confluence 1.3 (otherwise known as Murrumbidgee). Existing
customers who wish to upgrade, or new users who wish to try out Confluence for 30 days can download
either the standalone or WAR distributions from the Atlassian website: http://www.atlassian.com/
software/confluence
Murrumbidgee is the third major update to Confluence (in less than nine months!), and once again we've
raised the bar of what you should expect from a professional wiki. Confluence 1.3 looks better, performs
better, installs more easily and does far more than it ever has before.
A big thanks to everyone who reported bugs, and offered suggestions over the last few months,
especially everyone who helped by trying out our Development Releases.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
You will need to reindex your site after upgrading to enable some of the new site search features. You can
do this from the "Rebuild Search Index" link on the Administration Console.
Also, we've added a bunch of space-level permissions since 1.2. While our upgrade process should make
sure everyone has the same permissions after the upgrade as they did before, it's a good idea to check to
make sure nothing has been missed.
Oracle Users
If you are connecting Confluence to an Oracle database, it is very important that you read this
before upgrading: Oracle and Confluence 1.3
Users upgrading from an earlier version of Confluence should check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Contents
• New Features
• New Macros
• Improvements
• Notable Bug-fixes
New Features
Many of the features added to Confluence 1.3 are of interest only to site administrators. To get an idea of
what's changed from the perspective of a user, you should read What's New in 1.3
Confluence is a collaboration tool. When communication happens through Confluence, it gets archived,
indexed and interlinked so the whole team can benefit from the information. But what happens to
communication that happens via email? At best it gets hidden away in the corner of one team member's
inbox, at worst it just falls into nowhere.
Each Confluence space has a mail archive. You can import mail directly by uploading an mbox file, or you
can have Confluence regularly poll a POP mailbox for new mail. Once mail is imported into Confluence it
can be browsed chronologically or by thread, and searched using Confluence's powerful full-text search
functionality.
The threading and searching functionalities within Confluence are more powerful, and more useable than
most dedicated mail archives that you will find online! For more information about Confluence's mail
support, read the Mail Archiving FAQ.
It is now possible to package a particular Confluence look and feel into a theme. Themes can be dropped
into a Confluence installation, after which they will be available for global or space administrators to
customise the look and feel of the site.
Themes are built using the new plugin architecture that has been built into Confluence: for more details
on how to create your own theme, see Theme Plugins.
One of the most popular feature-requests, it is now possible to undelete pages, mail and blog-posts.
When content is deleted from a space it is moved to that space's trash can. Space administrators can
restore deleted pages, or consign them to oblivion.
Another of our most popular feature-requests, we've divided up the space permissions so administrators
have more control over what users can and can not do.
Macros
• {note}, {information}, {warning} and {tip} macros let you add coloured notes to your page.
• The {section} and {column} macros give you an alternative to wiki-markup tables
• The {jiraportlet} macro allows you to embed a JIRA 3 portlet into a Confluence page
• The {excerpt} macro has an optional hidden=true parameter to hide the contents of the excerpt
within the page
• The {excerpt-include} macro has an optional nopanel=true paramater to display the excerpt
without any decoration
• The {jiraissues} macro has an optional count=true parameter to display only the number of issues
found, not the details of those issues. It also has an oprtional cache=off parameter to ensure that a
list of Jira issues will refresh on each request.
• The {blog-posts} macro consistently displays blog-posts in reverse chronological order
• The {search} macro can be limited to particular types of content
• The notation guide has been reorganised to be more friendly to users who don't know what a macro
is
Improvements
Referrer Management
Setup Wizard
The Confluence setup wizard has been rewritten from the ground up. We've made it task-oriented, and
stripped it back to just the stuff you need to get Confluence running. The result is a much smoother,
much faster installation.
User Interface
We've made a lot of improvements to Confluence's user interface. You'll notice some improvements on
the Dashboard, making it easier to see exactly what's changed recently. You'll notice some huge changes
to the space summary/space administration section of the site.
Backups
• You can now exclude attached files from your backups. Of course, this means you have to back
up your attachment directory separately, but if you already have a good backup regime for your
filesystem (and can thus restore attachments separately), it means your Confluence data backups
will take a lot less space
• We now include important system configuration in your backups, so that when you restore a site
from backup, it will work the same way as it did when you backed it up.
Indexing
We have improved the way we index content within Confluence, which means your searches are even
more likely to find the right result.
If the primary language of your Confluence site is not English, you should change the "Indexing
Language" preference in Confluence's General Configuration.
Site Performance
We've identified a number of places that were slowing down the performance of Confluence sites, from
the dashboard to the spaces list page, to the search indexer, to the storing of referrers. Confluence
should now perform faster than ever.
Also...
We resolved a lot of issues between Confluence 1.2.3 and Confluence 1.3. The best way to see what
we've fixed is to ask JIRA, the world's best issue-tracker: Issues Resolved for 1.3
The attached slideshow presentation was written by Atlassian to be delivered to a customer who had
recently purchased Confluence, and wanted a quick tutorial on the major concepts involved in using
the product. While the content of the is now somewhat out of date (it refers to Confluence 1.3), it may
still be useful for organisations who have recently adopted Confluence, or who want another weapon in
Many of the changes between Confluence 1.2 and 1.3 are really of interest only to Confluence
administrators. Here we detail the changes that will be important to all Confluence users.
Previously, when you deleted a page or blog post, it was unrecoverable. In 1.3, deleting a page moves
it to the Trash. Space administrators can retrieve pages from the trash, or purge them forever. If a page
has been deleted (or you have deleted a page by mistake), contact a space administrator to get it back.
There are new macros for inserting coloured notes into a page:
{note}:
This is a note
{tip}:
This is a tip
A tip tells you something you might not have thought of yourself.
{info}:
This is informative
{warning}:
Beware!
Confluence now includes the capability to store email. This allows you to store mailing-list archives, or
records of conversations amongst your team inside Confluence. Mail archiving must be set up by a space
administrator.
Have a look at [an individual mail], or the view of an entire mail thread (We are using
confluence.atlassian.com to keep archives of the confluence-user mailing list).
All mail is indexed, but by default we exclude it from search results because the volume of email can
often overwhelm the content of the Confluence site. When you do a search, you might see this reminder
that there could be an answer to your question in the email archives:
To link to an email from a Confluence page, you must find the numeric ID of that mail from the end of its
URL, and put that in your link like so: [$12572], which Confluence will draw like this: [$12572]
• count=true makes the macro only return the number of issues matched by your filter, not the whole
list of issues
• cache=off makes the macro retrieve the filter results from JIRA every time the page is loaded,
ensuring the results are accurate. (Be careful if the filter returns a lot of results, though, you don't
want to overload your servers)
There is a new {jiraportlet} macro that allows you to retrieve any portlet from a server running JIRA 3,
and display it in a Confluence page, like so:
Project Lead:
Reports: Open Issues | Road Map | Change Log | Popular Issues | Labels | Calendar | Versions |
Components | GreenHopper
Open Issues: (By Priority)
Filter Issues:
- All - Resolved recently
- Outstanding - Added recently
- Unscheduled - Updated recently
- Most important
You can use the {section} and {column} macros to organise your page into columns. This is especially
useful when you combine it with the {jiraportlet} macro: you can arrange a Confluence page just like a
JIRA dashboard!
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tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac
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consectetuer. Donec volutpat eleifend augue. consectetuer. Donec volutpat eleifend augue.
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ac erat. Vivamus non nisl. Fusce ac magna. ac erat. Vivamus non nisl. Fusce ac magna.
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• Take a look at how the space summary page has been reorganised
• If you hit alt-E on any wiki page or blog post (ctrl-E if you're using a Mac), you'll be taken to the edit
page.
• If you start a link with three slashes, you can link to something relative to the root of the Confluence
installation. This is useful for creating links to pages that are part of Confluence, such as the
dashboard ([///]), or the space list ([///spaces/listspaces.action]).
• The {excerpt} macro can take a hidden=true parameter to hide the contents of the excerpt within
the page
Confluence 1.3.1 is a maintenance release that fixes some bugs that users may have encountered using
Confluence 1.3.
Confluence 1.3.1 fixes a number of bugs that were found in Confluence 1.3. However, none of the bugs
that were fixed were considered critical or likely to cause data-loss. Administrators should only upgrade
Confluence if they are affected by (or feel they would be affected by) one of the issues resolved by this
release.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Changes in 1.3.1
• Preferences for hiding or masking email addresses are no longer ignored on some screens –
CONF-2352
• The plugin manager will no longer fail with an error when trying to return a plugin to its default
state after activating or deactivating it – CONF-2396
• Disabling hot referrers in the referrer manager screen now works as expected – CONF-2397
• The save option has been restored to the comment preview screen – CONF-2321
• Deleting a blog post or a page no longer leaves possible orphaned comments in recent changes lists
– CONF-2323
• Also, some edge cases in the setup wizard were fixed, the demonstration content was tidied up, and
a few minor UI issues were resolved.
Confluence 1.3.2 is a maintenance release which includes 30 bug fixes and improvements that users may
have requested using Confluence 1.3.
We recommend that all 1.3.x users upgrade to Confluence 1.3.2 . It includes, among other things, the
fix of a memory leak which had been occuring in our error monitoring (see below or CONF-2540); if you
have been encountering performance issues within Confluence, this could be of benefit.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or 1.3.1, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Changes in 1.3.2
We've closed 30 issues, so we will not name them all. Among the most promiment in the list are:
Confluence 1.3.4 is a maintenance release which includes a few important bug fixes for anyone running
Confluence. These release-notes include information about the (briefly available) 1.3.3 version of
Confluence, which 1.3.4 has superseded.
We recommend that all 1.3.x users upgrade to Confluence 1.3.4. For customers running 1.3.2 and earlier,
it includes a fix to the security issue described in Confluence Security Advisory 2005-02-09, and it thus
an important upgrade for anyone who is still running an un-patched system.
For customers running 1.3.3, the upgrade is also recommended as this version fixes CONF-2740, a
regression in 1.3.3 which could cause referrer and trackback data to disappear.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 or 1.3.1, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Changes in 1.3.4
Since only five bug-fixes were made for this release, here is a quick run-down.
• The patch for the security issue described in Confluence Security Advisory 2005-02-09 has been
applied to 1.3.4
• A regression in 1.3.3 that caused trackback and referrer data to be lost has been fixed – CONF-2731
• An intermittent ClassCastException when viewing blog-posts has been fixed – CONF-1671
• The image cache for Apache FOP is now cleared between exports, preventing a case where the
wrong version of an attachment may end up in a PDF export – CONF-2647
• A spurious "Connection already closed" log message in the JIRA user management bridge no longer
occurs CONF-2656
Confluence 1.3.5 is a maintenance release which fixes a number of bugs found in earlier 1.3.x
Confluence releases. Some areas improved in this release are space export/import, search and LDAP user
management. 1.3.5 is also the first Confluence version to be successfully tested against Resin 3.0: see
below for the special steps you need to take to get it running.
We recommend that all 1.3.x users upgrade to Confluence 1.3.5. For customers running 1.3.2 and earlier,
it includes a fix to the security issue described in Confluence Security Advisory 2005-02-09, and it thus
an important upgrade for anyone who is still running an un-patched system.
For customers running 1.3.4, the upgrade is also recommended as this version fixes CONF-2750, a
regression in 1.3.4 that made it impossible to page through search results.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 – 1.3.4, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.2.3 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.3 release notes.
Changes in 1.3.5
Confluence 1.3.5 is the first Confluence version to be successfully tested against Resin 3.0.12. Customers
wishing to run Confluence under Resin 3 should read the special instructions at Known Issues for Resin
3.x
Issues Resolved
Confluence 1.3.6 is a special maintenance release for customers who are using Confluence with an
Oracle database. It contains a number of fixes, originally developed for Confluence 1.4, to Confluence's
behaviour against Oracle databases.
1.3.6 is available as a free upgrade for all existing Confluence customers from the archive download
page.
We recommend that customers skip Confluence 1.3.6 and upgrade to Confluence 1.4. Confluence 1.4
includes a great many new features and bug-fixes that are not included in 1.3.6. We do, however,
recognise that 1.4 is a significant upgrade and some customers wish to continue with Confluence 1.3 for
the time being.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3 – 1.3.4, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
Changes in 1.3.6
Confluence 1.3.6 addresses a number of situations in which Confluence could lock up, consume additional
resources, or fail to perform backup or restore operations against an Oracle database.
Hunter is the fourth major update to Confluence, and the biggest yet in terms of new features and
improvements both visible to the user or hidden "under the hood". Between 1.3.5 and 1.4, we resolved a
massive 480 issues.
A big thanks to everyone who reported bugs, and offered suggestions over the last few months,
especially everyone who helped by trying out our Development Releases.
Contents
• Upgrading
• Migration
• New Features
• Notable Bug Fixes
• Outstanding Bugs
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Because of the significant UI changes between 1.3 and 1.4 (see below), we highly recommend disabling
any themes or UI customisations before upgrading Confluence.
After upgrading to 1.4, administrators will need to rebuild the site's search-index to ensure all the new
search features are enabled. Do this from the Content Indexing section of the global administration
menu.
Upgrade Migration
The database migration tasks that must be run to upgrade Confluence from 1.3 to 1.4 may take
several minutes to run. During this time, Confluence will be unavailable.
Confluence License Expiration
A commercial Confluence license entitles you to a year of free upgrades. As such, Confluence 1.4 is
the first release of Confluence to which some customers may not be able to upgrade.
If you were issued your Confluence license before May 24th 2004, you will not be able to upgrade to
Confluence 1.4. Confluence 1.4 will refuse to run with any license issued before this date, and you
will be required to downgrade to a previous Confluence version.
Users upgrading from an earlier version of Confluence should check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Migration
The best place to find out about the new features available in Confluence 1.4 is by checking out our
What's New in Confluence 1.4 pages. However, there are a few features of specific interest to Confluence
administrators that will be mentioned here:
The engine by which Confluence converts wiki-text to HTML has been rewritten from scratch for
Confluence 1.4. This was necessary, as the complexity of Confluence's markup was overwhelming the
capabilities of the previous engine and leading to an increasing number of bugs, some of which had the
potential to bring down the entire server.
v2Renderer is in every way more powerful (and better, more predictable) than the previous engine, and
has undergone a lot of testing to make sure that it renders wiki pages the same way as its predecessor.
However, pages that made use of bugs or undocumented features in the original engine may no longer
render the same in 1.4 as they did in 1.3. If you come across something that is a bug or a missing
feature in the new renderer, please file an issue in JIRA.
One side-effect of the new renderer is that custom Java macros written for Confluence 1.3 and earlier
may not be compatible with Confluence 1.4 (although most should continue to function). For more
information, macro authors should read this document
In response to a lot of feedback from customers and users of Confluence, the User Interface has
undergone a major overhaul between Confluence 1.3 and 1.4. While the changes are mostly self-
explanatory, and we believe the new interface is significantly easier for everyone to use and understand
than its predecessor, it may be a good idea to make the following resource available to your users as part
of the transition: 1.4 Interface - Where Did Everything Go?
Because of the substantial changes to the interface, themes and UI customisations made for Confluence
1.3 and earlier are not compatible with Confluence 1.4, and should be disabled before you upgrade.
Also in response to a lot of feedback, blogs in Confluence have now been renamed to news. We feel
this makes it a lot easier to explain them to new and non-technical Confluence users. None of the
New Features
Confluence 1.4 has a lot of cool new stuff. Over the next week we'll be releasing a new section of the
Confluence website that will examine the new features in detail. Stay tuned.
We resolved a lot of issues between Confluence 1.3.5 and Confluence 1.4. The best way to see what
we've fixed is to ask JIRA, the world's best issue-tracker: Issues Resolved for 1.4
Outstanding Bugs
Some bugs were introduced during the Confluence 1.4 development cycle that we could not fix in time for
the final release. Of note are:
• Index rebuilding may fail on multi-processor systems (for a workaround, see CONF-3168)
• You can not install an XWork plugin by uploading through the web interface, it must be copied into
WEB-INF/lib (CONF-3184)
• Uploading a malformed plugin through the web interface may make other plugins cease to function
(CONF-3183)
• Under certain circumstances, the mbox mail import may fail against Oracle databases (CONF-3284)
• The Insert Image and Insert Link popups jump the cursor to the top of the text input area on
browsers other than Internet Explorer (CONF-3232)
Once again, if you find any bugs in Confluence, or have any feature suggestions, you can report them
online in JIRA.
Confluence 1.4.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 1.4. Issues include an occasional failure to display Confluence pages, Oracle and MySQL
database issues, and a slow memory-leak.
1.4.1 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after June 2nd, 2004.
Confluence 1.4.1 is a recommended upgrade for all users of Confluence 1.4, as it addresses a memory-
leak which, while slow, would progressively degrade Confluence's performance and ultimately cause the
server to exhaust available memory.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.6 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Changes in 1.4.1
Confluence 1.4.2 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
previous Confluence 1.4 releases. 1.4.2 introduces Websphere and DB2 compatibility, and fixes issues
related to content indexing and the mail queue.
1.4.2 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after June 30th, 2004.
Confluence 1.4.2 is a bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved for this
release to decide whether it is worth their while upgrading. Since this release includes a number of
important performance and reliability fixes for content indexing, anyone who relies on Confluence's
search functionality should consider upgrading.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 or 1.4.1, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.6 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Dependent on the size of your Confluence installation, the new re-indexing task may use up to 10
database connections simultaneously. As such, you may need to increase the size of your database
connection pool in order to allow Confluence to continue to operate during and after rebuilding the search
index.
If Confluence has been set up to use direct JDBC connections, then you will find the setting for
Confluence's connection pool size in confluence.cfg.xml in your confluence home directory. Confluence
should update this value automatically when you upgrade, so after starting up Confluence 1.4.2 for the
first time, you should check to make sure it has been updated to 15 connections, as seen below:
<property name="hibernate.c3p0.max_size">15</property>
If Confluence has been configured to use a datasource supplied by the application server, you should
ensure the application server is configured to supply Confluence with sufficient connections to run.
Changes in 1.4.2
• Confluence has now been tested on Websphere 5.1.1.3 (see Known Issues for Websphere)
• Confluence has now been tested against DB2 8.1 (Linux and Windows)
• The mechanism by which Confluence rebuilds its full-text search index has been rewritten to be
significantly less memory-intensive (but may be 10-15% slower). CONF-3340
• An issue that could cause comments or attachments to be removed from the search index when a
page was edited has been resolved. CONF-3489
• An issue that could cause index rebuilding to fail (especially on multi-processor systems) has been
resolved. CONF-3168
• Issues related to the size and reliability of the mail queue were resolved. CONF-3334 CONF-3474
• An exception when creating global templates was fixed. CONF-3386
• Some Javascript errors that were being flagged on Internet Explorer no longer occur. CONF-3422,
CONF-3482
• Exporting a space to HTML via XML-RPC now succeeds. CONF-3401
• Creating a blog post via XML-RPC now succeeds. CONF-3412
• ALL CAPS WORDS are no longer linked when CamelCase linking is activated. CONF-3361
• The display of user attachments does not break when the user has not yet set a profile. CONF-3420
Confluence 1.4.3 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
previous Confluence 1.4 releases. 1.4.3 introduces a new SOAP service provider, and fixes issues related
to incoming link tracking, notifications management, serving resources from dynamically loaded plugins,
and much more.
1.4.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after August 17th, 2004.
Confluence 1.4.3 is a bugfix release. While Atlassian recommends customers always run the most
recently available stable Confluence release, customers should consult the list of issues resolved to decide
whether it is worth their while upgrading.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 to 1.4.2, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.6 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Changes in 1.4.3
Confluence now ships with an second SOAP provider running Apache Axis, alongside the existing Glue
SOAP provider. This is the first step towards migrating entirely to Axis as our sole SOAP provider over the
next few major Confluence releases. If you use Confluence's SOAP API, you should read this document
for information about the migration process and timeframe.
All SOAP clients that worked with Confluence 1.4.2 will continue to work with Confluence 1.4.3 with
no change.
• A condition under which SOAP faults could be masked by HTML error pages on some application
servers was resolved. (CONF-3043)
• Deleting a page via the remote API now places that page in the trash. (CONF-3403)
• Adding space level permissions to a user through the remote API now works as expected.
(CONF-3596)
• A bug that would cause a page's most recent editor to change when the page was previewed has
been fixed (CONF-3424)
• A bug that could cause a page's incoming links not to be displayed has been fixed (CONF-3509)
• A bug that could cause "Watch this space" not to function has been fixed (CONF-3510)
• A bug that could cause Confluence to run out of available file descriptors when exporting a space
has been fixed (CONF-3517)
• A bug that could cause an email notification to be sent regarding a page that was restricted by
page-level permissions has been fixed (CONF-3573)
• The attachment upload form in the "Insert Image" is more robust against error (CONF-3677,
CONF-3676)
• Searching for a page in the Parent Page Picker Popup now functions as expected (CONF-3364)
• Deleting a user now correctly deletes their email notifications (CONF-3619)
• Restoring a page from the trash now re-adds that page's comments to the search index
(CONF-3564)
• Attachment links are now not rendered if the user can not view the attachment due to page level
permissions (CONF-3553)
Starting with the release of Confluence 1.4.3, and stretching through the next three major releases,
Confluence will be transitioning from using the Glue library to provide a SOAP remote API, to using
Apache Axis. Unfortunately, while the SOAP services will stay the same, the WSDL that these libraries
generate to interact with the same services will change, so SOAP applications that interact with
Confluence will need to migrate with us.
The migration should be relatively painless. Since the underlying objects represented by the WSDL
are still the same, the process should involve regenerating your SOAP stubs, and a few cosmetic code
changes.
Current Status
The Plan
Third-party SOAP RPC Plugins deployed in Confluence will be similarly deployed in three locations
Confluence major releases occur every three or four months. Thus, authors of SOAP clients should keep
in mind this timeline, starting with the release of Confluence 2.0 (November 2005)
Confluence 1.4.4 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
previous Confluence 1.4 releases. 1.4.4 fixes a number of issues, including many related to the reliability
of uploaded plugins
1.4.4 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after September 23rd,
2004.
Confluence 1.4.4 is a bugfix release. While Atlassian recommends customers always run the most
recently available stable Confluence release, customers should consult the list of issues resolved to decide
whether it is worth their while upgrading.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence versions between
1.4 and 1.4.3, you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.6 or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the
Confluence 1.4 release notes.
Changes in 1.4.4
Prior to Confluence 1.4.4, plugins containing Spring components, XWork actions or velocity templates
could not be uploaded through the web interface, and needed to be installed manually in WEB-INF/lib.
Confluence 1.4.4 fixes these issues.
Database Indexes
Confluence 1.4.4 now correctly creates database indexes on a clean installation. If you are upgrading an
existing Confluence instance, you should consult Performance Tuning for information on indexes that can
improve Confluence's performance significantly.
Atlassian Software is proud to present Confluence 2.0 (otherwise known as Yarra). Yarra is the result of
five months of solid work by the Confluence team, and we're really glad to be able, finally, to share it
with the world. Existing customers who wish to upgrade, or new users who wish to try out Confluence
for 30 days, can download Confluence from the Atlassian website: http://www.atlassian.com/software/
confluence
Yarra is the fifth major update to Confluence. Among the improvements in Confluence 2.0 are an easy-
to-use WYSIWYG editor for writing pages, labels for categorising them, and a powerful RSS builder for
keeping track of what's new.
Confluence 2.0 is a free upgrade for any customer who purchased their Confluence license after
November 16th, 2004. If the maintenance period of your license has expired, or is about to expire, why
not contact our friendly sales staff and get it renewed? It's the only way to keep up with all the great new
features we're adding.
A big thanks to everyone who reported bugs and offered suggestions over the last few months, especially
everyone who helped by trying out our Development Releases. Also, congratulations to the Socceroos
for getting Australia into the World Cup for the first time in 32 years. It almost makes up for losing the
Ashes.
Contents
• Upgrading
• Migration
• New Features
• Notable Bug Fixes
• Outstanding Bugs
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4.2 or earlier, you may experience problems with some
space-related functionality (see CONF-4765), such as adding a space as a favourite. To work around
this, please restart the Confluence instance after the upgrade. This will be fixed in Confluence 2.0.2.
Macro/Plugin Compatibility
Necessary changes were made to the Confluence rendering subsystem during the development of
Confluence 2.0 that may render some third-party plugins (especially macros) inoperable. If you
upgrade Confluence and find that macros or plugins are not operating correctly, try removing all files
from [confluence-home]/plugins and restarting Confluence.
HSQL 1.8 Upgrade
If you are using the embedded HSQL database, it is possible that Confluence will not be able to
automatically upgrade your data. If this happens, Confluence 2.0 will refuse to start, and you will
be directed to the following Confluence page which contains instructions on how to upgrade the
database manually: Upgrading From HSQL 1.7.1 to 1.8
SSO update
If you are using some third-party Seraph authenticator with Confluence, or have written your
own, you should read CONF-4581 before upgrading. Confluence now uses the Seraph defined
Confluence 2.0 may perform very badly under Weblogic. There is a workaround for this problem
described in CONF-4634, and a full fix IS included in 2.0.1.
JDK 1.5
If you are running Confluence 2.0 on the JDK 1.5, you will need to download some additional
dependencies as described in CONF-4643. A full fix is included in a 2.0.1.
MySQL 5
If you are running Confluence 2.0 on the MySQL 5 database, you may encounter some problems.
One fix is described here.
After upgrading to 2.0, administrators will need to rebuild the site's search-index to ensure all the new
search features are enabled. Do this from the Content Indexing section of the global administration
menu.
Users upgrading from an earlier version of Confluence should check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
New Features
Browser Compatibility
The Confluence Rich Text editor is currently only compatible with Internet Explorer 6 on Windows,
plus Mozilla and Firefox across platforms. Javascript must be enabled in the browser for the editor to
function. Support for Safari under Mac OS X is currently not available. To track Safari compatibility,
please follow this JIRA issue: CONF-3864
It almost goes without saying that the most highly requested feature in Confluence has been the ability
to create pages without having to learn wiki markup. We're glad we can finally offer a powerful "what you
see is (pretty much) what you get" rich text editor built into Confluence, making it easier for anyone to
contribute to the site.
For the "feature mad" amongst us, here are some neat things you can do with the WYSIWYG editor:
• Full screen view - really useful for editing large pages. Click Cannot resolve external resource into
attachment. in the menu bar.
• Quickly switch between WYSIWYG and Wiki markup without a page refresh
• Change the size of your editing window to suit your browser. Your size preference is remembered
across sessions. To change it, drag the handle in the bottom right hand corner of the editor.
• Undo and redo!
Labels
Another highly requested feature was the ability to categorise content within Confluence beyond the
rigid heirarchy allowed by spaces and parent-child relationships between pages. To this end we have
introduced labels: simple one-word 'tags' that can be added to any page or blog-post the user has
permission to edit. Labels can be used to categorise content, bookmark it, flag it for attention, or
anything else you can think of.
Picking a name for labels wasn't easy. Google's GMail service calls them labels, while other
collaborative categorisation systems such as del.icio.us and Flickr call them tags. We decided
that 'label' was a more natural description. For more information about our choice, see Labels vs
Keywordson our new Developer Blog and for more on the overall philosophy behind labels and tags,
check out the Folksonomy page on Wikipedia.
Labels can be added to any page from the edit screen, or through a dynamic interface right when you're
viewing a page.
Personal Labels
If you prepend my: to a label (for example, my:todo or my:favourite, then the label is a personal label -
only visible to you. Personal labels allow you to tag content for your own purposes: for example to keep
track of pages you feel need your attention, or that contain information you refer to frequently. You can
browse your personal labels from your user profile. Any user can add their personal labels to any page,
even when they don't have editing permission.
Favourites
Favourites are a special personal label: my:favourite or my:favorite. Whenever you see the Cannot
resolve external resource into attachment. icon, it means you can label this content as being your
favourite, and whenever you see the Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. icon, it means
that the content is currently in your list of favourites. You can view your favourites from the Labels tab of
your user profile, or keep track of them on your dashboard.
Label-Aware Macros
Many existing macros have been improved to allow you to filter content based on labels: including the
{recent-pages}, {recently-updated} and {blog-posts} macros. We've also added macros that provide
more information about labels and labelled content:
Dashboard Features
The Confluence dashboard has been improved to make it easier for you to keep track of only those
spaces you are interested in: a big improvement for Confluence sites with large numbers of spaces. The
list of spaces is now divided into four tabs (although all four may not be visible):
The recently updated content list on the dashboard will reflect the spaces in your chosen tab. So if you're
looking at the My tab, the dashboard will only be showing you the recent updates in your favourite
spaces.
*Teams*
RSS Builder
Confluence has always provided a brace of useful RSS feeds, but the problem is that for every feed we
provided, users asked for half a dozen more. The obvious answer is to let users build RSS feeds based on
their own chosen criteria. You can access the RSS builder from the Confluence dashboard
Once you have decided what you want, Confluence will give you a URL to paste into your RSS
reader. These URLs can be shared with other Confluence users, although they will only ever be
allowed to see content that they have permission to view. If you have asked to authenticate,
Confluence will require HTTP Basic Authentication, which is supported by most RSS readers.
We've also taken the opportunity to improve the presentation of our RSS feeds - including a lot more
information in each feed so you can follow your Confluence site entirely from your newsreader.
The Atom Working Group has blessed the final Atom 1.0 standard, and are recommending that all
applications remove support for Atom 0.3. However, as of the release of Confluence 2.0, there is no
stable Atom 1.0 library from which we could generate feeds. In some future release of Confluence,
Atom 0.3 support will be removed in favour of Atom 1.0.
There is now a field on the edit screen for recording a "change comment" when you edit a page. These
comments are stored in the page history, and can be used to keep a more complete history of why a page
has been edited.
Copy Pages
Also on the Info tab is a "Copy" link that allows you to clone a page in a single click - including making
copies of any attachments.
Improved Search Interface
Results returned from Confluence's search engine now have:
• Improved contextual results, showing the most important text around where your query was
matched in the page
• Contextual results for any attachment: see where a search was matched even inside PDF, Word,
PowerPoint or Excel documents!
• Search results for attachments give you more (and clearer) information about what the attachment
is, and where it's from!search-result-fragments.png|align=center!
Chart Plugin
The Chart Macro is now shipped with Confluence, allowing you to dynamically generate neat looking
charts like this:
{chart:title=Fish Sold|type=bar|width=400|
height=350|legend=true}
|| Fish Type || 2004 || 2005 ||
|| Herring | 9,500 | 8,300 |
|| Salmon | 2,900 | 4,200 |
|| Tuna | 1,500 | 1,500 |
{chart}
The gallery macro has been spruced up, and now has a slideshow view:
My Alphabetically
Popular
personal organised
labels for
labels! labels for
a given
Only a given
space.
for me! space.
The new
Improved RSS
search builder
Screenshot showing lets you
of the new fragments construct
2.0 rich from RSS feeds
text editor attachments, of exactly
file sizes the
and types. content
you want.
• Comment manipulation
• Label manipulation
• Attachment uploading and editing
• Improved user- and permissions management
Confluence now uses version 2.0 of the Apache XML-RPC library. Java XML-RPC clients using
earlier versions of the Apache XML-RPC libraries (i.e. 1.3 or earlier) may experience problems
with responses containing non-ASCII data.
Also...
• You can download all the attachments on a page in a single zip-file
• Import and restore now have progress indicators
• Backup and restore use significantly less memory
• The embedded database has been upgraded to HSQL 1.8, which should be significantly more reliable
• Collapsed breadcrumbs now expand with a single mouse click
We resolved a lot of issues between Confluence 1.4.4 and Confluence 2.0. The best way to see what
we've fixed is to ask JIRA, the world's best issue-tracker: Issues Resolved for 2.0
Outstanding Bugs
Some bugs were introduced during the Confluence 2.0 development cycle that we could not fix in time for
the final release. Of note are:
• Some pernicious Javascript errors when changing styles in the rich text editor under Internet
Explorer
• The rich text editor may not perfectly handle complex pages with structural macros
• Attachments containing high-bit characters in their filenames may not be correctly retrieved by
Confluence
Once again, if you find any bugs in Confluence, or have any feature suggestions, you can report them
online in JIRA.
Development Documentation
Tom Davies Vidya Madabushi
Jeremy Higgs
David Loeng
Charles Miller Oversight & Mis management
Daniel Ostermeier Mike Cannon-Brookes
Jens Schumacher Scott Farquhar
Nerf Target-Practice
Nick Faiz
Well that's all folks - if you're still reading - thank you for getting this far!
Confluence 2.0.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.0. In particular, this includes issues relating to failures to upgrade and javascript problems.
2.0.1 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after November 28th,
2004.
Confluence 2.0.1 is a recommended upgrade for all users who have not yet upgraded to 2.x and for those
users of 2.0 that are encountering issues fixed in this release.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4.4 or earlier of Confluence, please check the release-notes of the
other major Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.0.1
Confluence 2.0.2 is a maintenance release that resolves a security issue, along with various issues users
may have encountered using Confluence 2.0.1.
A security flaw as described by the Confluence Security Advisory 2005-12-05 has been identified to
exist in Confluence 1.4.x and 2.0.x. This has been fixed in 2.0.2. We recommend to all customers
that they either upgrade to 2.0.2 or follow the instructions provided on the Confluence Security
Advisory 2005-12-05 to patch there installation.
The release of Firefox 1.5 resulted in new bugs and issues with the Rich Text editor. Therefore every
version of Confluence up to 2.0.2 isn't very compatible with this browser in terms of Rich Text
editing.
Confluence 2.0.3 will feature an updated version of the editor which will solve most of the problems
with Firefox 1.5 (CONF-4809).
2.0.2 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after December 5th,
2004.
Confluence 2.0.2 is a recommended upgrade for all users as it contains a security patch for the
Confluence Security Advisory 2005-12-05. If you are unable to upgrade to 2.0.2, then please see
Confluence Security Advisory 2005-12-05 for details on how to patch your installation.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4.4 or earlier of Confluence, please check the release-notes of the
other major Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.0.2
• Search results page needs to XML encode the query string provided by the user (CONF-4825).
• Recently updated does not list any items (CONF-4770).
• CamelCase linking interferes with rendering of attachment link (CONF-3447).
• Umlaute in links are causing encoding problems with the Rich Text editor (CONF-4775).
• Disabled accounts still receive (blank) daily reports (CONF-4802).
Confluence 2.0.3 is a maintenance release. It contains a upgrade of the WYSIWYG editor and numerous
bug fixes.
2.0.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after December 12th,
2004.
Confluence 2.0.3 is a recommended upgrade for all users who are having problems with the WYSIWYG
editor. This release contains an upgrade to the WYSIWYG module that contains numerous bug fixes.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4.4 or earlier of Confluence, please check the release-notes of the
other major Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.0.3
Atlassian is happy to offer our customers an early Christmas present: Confluence 2.1 (otherwise known
as Bogan). Existing customers who wish to upgrade, or new users who wish to try out Confluence for
30 days, can download Confluence from the Atlassian website: http://www.atlassian.com/software/
confluence
Bogan is the Sixth major update to Confluence, offering vastly improved LDAP integration through our
new atlassian-user library, as well as introducing the much-requested autosave feature to protect you
from losing your precious edits.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Plugin Compatibility
Any plugin written for Confluence 2.0 and earlier that interfaces with the User system will need
to be updated for Confluence 2.1. Plugin developers can find more information on the Atlassian
developer blog
LDAP Integration Configuration Changes
Customers who have already integrated Confluence with LDAP through the OSUser LDAP providers
will need to make changes to their osuser.xml file before upgrading. You can find full details here:
Special LDAP Integration Note for users upgrading to Confluence version 2.1.x or higher
OSUSer or Seraph Customisations
Customers who have performed their own customisations on OSUser or Seraph within Confluence
must be sure to test their changes with Confluence 2.1 before upgrading any production system.
While we have tried to maintain backwards compatibility, the integration of atlassian-user may
adversely affect existing customisations.
Users upgrading directly from 1.4 or earlier should also read the 2.0 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 1.4 -> 2.0 upgrade.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
3. Notable Bug-fixes
New Features
Autosave
If you've used wikis for long enough, you know the pain of losing a long, involved editing session to
a browser crash, session timeout, or just not thinking and clicking on a link to another page. As of
Confluence 2.1, this is no longer a problem: the most you'll lose is half a minute of your work.
Every thirty seconds (this interval is configurable by the global administrator), the browser will save your
unfinished edit to the server. This autosave will hang around until you either hit the "Save" or "Cancel"
button yourself, even if the server is restarted. So if you lose your changes, all you have to do is navigate
back to the edit page, and will be given the chance to begin editing again where you left off.
A useful side-effect of autosave is that now Confluence has an accurate way of measuring who is editing
which page. If two people start editing the same page at the same time, Confluence will display a
warning message telling you who else is editing the page. You can then negotiate between yourselves
who gets to save first.
Even better, Confluence will let you know how long it was since the other editor made any changes to the
page, so if somebody has just left their browser open on the edit page for a couple of hours, you'll know
User Management
Confluence 2.1 sees the landing of our new atlassian-user user management library. Most Confluence
customers will not see any significant change from this move, but for anyone looking to integrate
Confluence with an external user-base (especially LDAP), atlassian-user is a big step forward.
Confluence can now integrate fully with an LDAP directory server, without the previously annoying
practice of having to mirror the users and groups locally on Confluence: Confluence LDAP Documentation
Index
Improvements
Performance
A lot of work was done improving the performance of the Confluence dashboard and edit pages,
especially for customers who may have thousands of spaces and hundreds of thousands of pages in their
Confluence installation. Both of these pages should now respond significantly faster.
Other
• You can now manually set the MIME type under which embedded objects should be served –
CONF-4906
• The system info and error pages include more information about your database configuration –
CONF-4957
• Email attachments no longer show up on the recently updated list (this seems to have regressed in
the final release) – CONF-4684
Notable Bug-fixes
Confluence 2.1 includes all bug-fixes that were made up to Confluence 2.0.3, and also includes fixes for
the following issues:
• Preview now works correctly when rich text editor is disabled – CONF-4935
• Info tab no longer shows incoming links from pages in the trash – CONF-4815
• Trying to set a page as its own parent now presents a validation error instead of a system error –
CONF-4941
• Confluence no longer removes every second character from the filenames of email attachments –
CONF-4938
• JiraJdbcProfileProvider problems reliably accessing profile information from JIRA resolved –
CONF-4933
• Unresolved images now replaced with placeholders in WYSIWYG editor – CONF-4929
• Removing the {excerpt} macro from a page now deletes the excerpt – CONF-4918
Development Atlassian-User
Tom Davies Nick Faiz
Jeremy Higgs
David Loeng Documentation
Charles Miller Vidya Madabushi
Daniel Ostermeier
Jens Schumacher
Oversight & Mis management
Mike Cannon-Brookes
Scott Farquhar
Confluence 2.1.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.1, including issues related to user management, the editing UI and email notifications.
2.1.1 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after December 24th,
2004.
Due to the severity of the issues that it resolves, Confluence 2.1.1 is a recommended upgrade for all
Confluence customers.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0.3 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.1.1
2.1.2 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after January 12th,
2005.
Confluence 2.1.2 fixes a number of bugs found in Confluence 2.1.1 and earlier. Customers are
recommended to upgrade if they are experiencing any of the issues fixed in this release.
Upgrade Procedure
If you are using MySQL, please apply the patch detailed in this bug report http://jira.atlassian.com/
browse/CONF-5153. That is, please download 2.1.2, extract it, and copy the above mentioned patch
into the unpacked 2.1.2 distribution and then go about your upgrade. We will be releasing a version
with this patch bundled soon.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1 or 2.1.1, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0.3 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.1.2
Improvements
• JiraPortlet macro now has an optional "baseurl" parameter for when Confluence accesses JIRA from
a different URL to regular users – CONF-4897
• Children listed at the bottom of pages are now sorted alphabetically – CONF-4878
• Confluence warns space administrators when they permit anonymous access to a space, but global
anonymous access is disabled – CONF-4898
Bugs Fixed
Confluence 2.1.3 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered
using Confluence 2.1.2 or earlier, including issues related to Rich Text editing, LDAP user management,
restoring to MySQL, and Unicode on MS SQL Server
2.1.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after January 23rd,
2005.
Confluence 2.1.3 fixes a number of bugs found in Confluence 2.1.2 and earlier. Customers are
recommended to upgrade if they are experiencing any of the issues fixed in this release.
Confluence is a recommended upgrade for all customers using Confluence's new atlassian-user LDAP user
management with dynamic group mappings. For more information see USER-95
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1 to 2.1.2, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0.3 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.1.3
Improvements
Bugs Fixed
• Many fixes related to Rich Text editing, and switching between Rich Text and Wiki Markup editing.
• Further PDF export fixes – CONF-4930
• The upload option in the attachments macro works – CONF-5127
• Fixed a bug where Word exports would open in the wrong application – CONF-5163
• Handling of situation where site exceeds its licensed user limit and then removes users is improved
– CONF-5208
• Restoring a site to MySQL now properly removes and re-creates database tables – CONF-5153
• Confluence now uses correct NVARCHAR type for multibyte text in MS SQL Server – CONF-5204
Confluence 2.1.4 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.1.3 or earlier. Confluence 2.1.4 fixes more than 55 issues, including bugs related to space
import/export, the WYSIWYG editor, page breadcrumbs, and many more
2.1.4 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after February 16th,
2005.
Confluence 2.1.4 fixes a number of bugs found in Confluence 2.1.3 and earlier. Customers are
recommended to upgrade if they are experiencing any of the issues fixed in this release.
Confluence is a recommended upgrade for all customers using Confluence's new atlassian-user LDAP user
management, as it fixes important issues related to user login validation.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from an earlier Confluence 2.1 release,
you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory
and database before upgrading!
If you are running a Sybase or Microsoft SQL Server database, please replace confluence/WEB-INF/
classes/com/atlassian/confluence/upgrade/UpgradeUtils.class with this version before upgrading.
You should also install this if your upgrade fails with the message: Session is currently disconnected
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0.3 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.1.4
More than 55 issues were resolved between 2.1.3 and 2.1.4. For the complete list, see: Issues resolved
for 2.1.4
A bug was fixed in 2.1.4 that previously allowed spaces as attribute separators in embedded content wiki
markup (CONF-5406). This means !image.jpg|alt=Great pic! now works correctly, but !image.jpg|
border=1 alt=test! doesn't. The correct and documented way to write the latter continues to be !
image.jpg|border=1,alt=test!.
Improvements
Confluence 2.1.5 has a problem which disables the rich text editor link dialog. Please replace the
file WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/user/actions/PagePickerAction.properties with this
file: PagePickerAction.properties
Anonymous users may get a Javascript error under some circumstances. See CONF-5765 for details
and a patch.
When using LDAP user management, changing passwords for local users won't work. See
CONF-5775 for details and a patch.
Confluence 2.1.5 fixes a number of bugs found in Confluence 2.1.4 and earlier. Customers are
recommended to upgrade if they are experiencing any of the issues fixed in this release.
Confluence is a recommended upgrade for all customers using Confluence's new atlassian-user LDAP user
management, as it fixes important issues related to LDAP integration.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from an earlier Confluence 2.1 release,
you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory
and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.0.3 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.1.5
More than 48 issues were resolved between 2.1.4 and 2.1.5. For the complete list, see: Issues resolved
for 2.1.5
Improvements
• Anchor, user profile and attachment links now round-trip properly in the rich text editor -
CONF-5678
Atlassian is proud to announce the release of Confluence 2.2, otherwise known as Shoalhaven Existing
customers who wish to upgrade, or new users who wish to try out Confluence for 30 days, can download
Confluence from the Atlassian website: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
Shoalhaven is the seventh major update to Confluence (in two years!). It introduces 'personal spaces',
support for localisation/internationalisation, CAPTCHA spam protection, a multitude of new extension
points for plugin developers, a simpler LDAP configuration syntax, and more.
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy: you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that
you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.0 or earlier should also read the 2.1 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.0 -> 2.1 upgrade.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
3. Notable Bug-fixes
4. Important note for MySQL users
Personal Spaces
Two of the most frequent questions we get from Confluence customers have been: "How do I give my
users their own wiki?" and "How do I give my users their own blog?" It seems everybody needs a little
Personal Space.
Personal spaces belong to particular users, and rather than being listed on the dashboard, are available
from the user's profile. (Future versions of Confluence will feature a 'people browser' to make it easier to
discover the interesting personal spaces on your server). They can contain pages and news items like any
other space, be searched and browsed. They can be kept private, or opened up so the whole world can
view and edit them, just like global spaces.
Confluence's search and RSS builder interfaces have been updated to make it easy to choose whether
you're interested in personal spaces or not.
Localisation/Internationalisation
Confluence now supports drop-in language packs to change the language of the user interface. The
global administrator can select a default language for the entire site, while individual users can set their
preferred language in their preferences.
No language packs are currently available, but we are currently working with our global partners so we
can begin to provide translations. If you are interested in translating Confluence into another language,
you can find instructions on building a language pack here: Language Pack Plugins.
Many of the more public Confluence wikis have been suffering at the hands of spammers. CAPTCHA
support adds the familiar 'type in this word' question to signup, edit and comment forms, to defeat
automated spamming bots. You can turn on CAPTCHA from the global administrative console, and also
choose which users will, or will not be subject to the spam check.
Plugin Improvements
Each version of Confluence is more customiseable than the last. One of the most exciting things to
come from our recent plugin competition was learning just how creative our plugin developers are, and
discovering more ways we can help them add features to Confluence.
• Job Plugins and Trigger Plugins allow you to schedule periodic tasks to run within Confluence
• Web UI Plugins allow plugin developers to add new links, buttons and tabs to the Confluence
interface, and make it easier for theme developers to stay up to date with changes to the
Confluence UI.
• Code Formatting Plugins allow you to plug support for new languages into the {code} macro (or
override the existing language support with something better).
• Making sure that a single 'rogue' plugin can't bring down the whole plugin subsystem.
• Enabling 'conditional get' for plugin resources, so browsers don't download them again and again.
• Fixing problems that may occur when a servlet or component plugin is reloaded or upgraded. (With
many thanks to Dan Hardiker of Adaptavist.)
As promised, we have cleaned up the configuration file syntax for our atlassian-user user management
library. This should make it much easier to configure Confluence to use external user repositories such as
LDAP. You can find details of the new configuration file format here: Add LDAP Integration
Improvements
In Confluence 2.1 and earlier, permissions that were assigned to Anonymous users were not
automatically assigned to logged-in users, leading to the confusing situation where you could view a page
when not logged in, but not view it when you were logged in.
In Confluence 2.2 and later, permissions that are assigned to the Anonymous user are also assigned to
all logged in users. The sole exception to this rule is the global Use Confluence permission, which must
still be explicitly granted to any user who wishes to log in. (This exception is necessary due to licensing
restrictions).
Search
With help from Kelvin Tan, we've overhauled much of the underlying infrastructure of Confluence's search
engine. Search in Confluence should now be more efficient, and some searches that were problematic
before (such as wildcard* searches) now work as you would expect them to.
LDAP Performance
Confluence's performance against external LDAP user repositories should now be significantly faster.
Other
For users using MySQL with Confluence 2.2 (or higher), please ensure that you are using the latest
(3.1.12) MySQL Java Connector. Earlier versions of the MySQL connector have a bug which is triggered by
improvements in Confluence 2.2. These earlier connector versions will result in an error being recorded in
your logs on upgrade (and will result in unstable operation of Confluence)
You can download the latest MySQL connector from the MySQL Java Connector 3.1 download page.
Please be sure that you remove any older versions of the connector from your application server.
Confluence 2.2.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.2, including issues related to LDAP user management, i18n, personal spaces and drafts.
2.2.1 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after May 18th, 2004.
Confluence is a recommended upgrade for all customers using Confluence with external LDAP user
management. All other customers should consult the list of issues resolved, and determine if this release
is necessary for their own deployments.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2, you can find
instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.1
• Creating a new user will no longer cause a primary key violation on some Confluence installations.
CONF-6092
• Fixed a regression where authentication against an external LDAP server via the old OSUser
integration layer did not function. CONF-6052
• Fixed a possible ClassCastException on viewing a user's profile. CONF-6021
Plugins
Note: Due to a scheduling error, these fixes were not included in Confluence 2.2.1, but are in the
supplementary 2.2.1a release.
• Component plugins are now correctly unregistered when they are removed. CONF-4041
• Plugins may now contain and reference dependent jar files. Thanks to Dan Hardiker of Adaptavist for
the patch. PLUG-8
• Installing an older version of an already-installed plugin no longer causes an error. PLUG-12
General Stability
• Confluence can now store drafts for spaces with long (>20 character) keys. CONF-6010
• Attachments stored in MySQL databases will no longer be silently truncated to 64KB. CONF-6120
• Global language setting is now saved correctly. CONF-6027
• Missing attachment data no longer causes PDF export to crash. CONF-6063
• Misleading "attachment missing" errors are no longer logged after a space import. CONF-6026
Improvements
• A Javascript alert warns users if they have left the CAPTCHA field blank. CONF-5984
• A link to the logged-in user's personal space is included on every page (from their full name).
CONF-6056
• The {children} macro can now show the children of pages in another space. CONF-5986
Confluence 2.2.2 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.2, including issues related to PDF generation, internationalisation, backup/restore and more.
2.2.2 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after May 31st, 2005.
Confluence 2.2.2 resolves CONF-6237, a bug related to the backup and restore of personal spaces. As
such it is a recommended upgrade for customers wishing to restore or import data containing personal
spaces. Other users should consult the list of resolved issues, and determine if the upgrade is necessary
for their installation.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2 or 2.2.1, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.2
Over 25 issues were resolved between Confluence 2.2.1 and 2.2.2. For a complete list, see: Issues
resolved for 2.2.2
Backup/Restore
• An issue was resolved that could cause personal spaces to be imported incorrectly from backups.
Existing backup files are still valid, the error was only during the re-importing process – CONF-6237
PDF Export
• PDF exports can now be generated for pages containing non-latin characters. To enable these
exports you will need to provide Confluence with the correct font – CONF-1457
• PDF exports created in Confluence are now properly searchable, both in Confluence (CONF-1360)
and in Adobe Acrobat (CONF-4529)
Other
• (UI) Fixed a Javascript error when saving a page with CAPTCHA disabled – CONF-6221
• (User management) Resolved an error when deleting a non-empty group – CONF-6082
• (i18n) Resolved issues with hard-coded English text in various places – CONF-6202
• (i18n) Resolved issues with internationalisation keys showing up in the permissions guide –
CONF-6053
Confluence 2.2.3 is a maintenance release that resolves some issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.2, including issues related to LDAP user management, installation, backup/restore and
more. This release also includes a patch for a serious security issue regarding global permissions.
2.2.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after June 8th, 2005.
Confluence 2.2.3 resolves a security bug related to unauthorised modification of global permissions. As
such this release is a recommended upgrade for all customers.
For users of older versions of Confluence who do not wish to upgrade, a patch for this issue will be
available shortly.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2, 2.2.1 or 2.2.2,
you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory
and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.3
As part of a new process for pushing out bug fix releases more quickly, this release follows just a week
after the release of 2.2.2. Six issues were resolved between Confluence 2.2.2 and 2.2.3. For a complete
list, see: Issues resolved for 2.2.3
Global Permissions
• A security problem was identified where unauthorised users could modify global permissions. For
more information, including details on how to patch previous Confluence versions, please see the
security advisory
Backup/Restore
• An issue was resolved where attachments were not imported from space exports. Existing backup
files are still valid, the error was only during the re-importing process – CONF-6286
• Queries to LDAP repositories are now correctly escaped, so user and group names may contain
commas – USER-106
Other
Confluence 2.2.4 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.2.
2.2.4 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after June 22nd, 2005.
Confluence 2.2.4 is a minor bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved in this
release to determine if it is worth their while upgrading.
Customers still running Confluence 2.2.2 or earlier are recommended to upgrade, as a significant security
vulnerability was resolved in Confluence 2.2.3
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2 - 2.2.3, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.4
We are currently trialling a process of more frequent bugfix releases, to make fixes available as soon as
possible to those people who want them. 2.2.4 resolves six issues:
User Interface
• The "Space Admin" tab is no longer displayed to non-administrators. (Even though the tab was
visible, non-administrators could still not access any of the administrative functions) CONF-6385
• Personal spaces are no longer listed in the space picker in the feed builder CONF-6830
• Attempts to create news items with invalid characters now fail with the correct error message
CONF-6358
Performance
Developer API
• Putting pages into, and removing them from the trash now trigger the correct events within
Confluence CONF-6353
Issues Resolved
Confluence 2.2.6a is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.2.
2.2.6a is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after June 22nd, 2005.
Confluence 2.2.6a is a minor bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved in this
release to determine if it is worth their while upgrading. Customers running Confluence 2.2.5 should
upgrade, as 2.2.6a fixes a security problem which could allow an unauthorised user to modify space mail
box configuration. Only version 2.2.5 is affected by this vulnerability. Customers running 2.2.5 who don't
wish to upgrade can follow these instructions to patch the vulnerability.
Customers still running Confluence 2.2.2 or earlier are recommended to upgrade, as a significant security
vulnerability was resolved in Confluence 2.2.3
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2 - 2.2.3, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.6a
We are currently trialling a process of more frequent bugfix releases, to make fixes available as soon as
possible to those people who want them. 2.2.6a resolves 20 issues.
A few of the issues are noted below, see Issues Resolved for 2.2.6a for a complete list.
User Interface
• The rich text editor allows underlining to be removed, and lists in tables are better behaved.
CONF-6450, CONF-6508
• Users with capital letters in their names can watch pages and spaces. CONF-6489
LDAP
Performance
This patch fixes a minor security vulnerability regarding the administration of space mail accounts. It
affects only Confluence 2.2.5.
To install this patch please download the three files attached to this page, stop Confluence and copy them
to your WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/mail/actions directory, where they will replace
the existing files. Then start Confluence.
Confluence 2.2.7 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.2.
2.2.7 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after July 28th, 2005.
Confluence 2.2.7 is a minor bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved in this
release to determine if it is worth their while upgrading.
Customers still running Confluence 2.2.2 or earlier are recommended to upgrade, as a significant security
vulnerability was resolved in Confluence 2.2.3
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2 - 2.2.3, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.7
We are currently trialling a process of more frequent bugfix releases, to make fixes available as soon as
possible to those people who want them. 2.2.7 resolves 23 issues.
A few of the issues are noted below, see Issues Resolved for 2.2.7 for a complete list.
• Tasks with the same name in different lists are now distinguished. CONF-5809
User Management
• The manage groups page can now display an unlimited number of groups. CONF-6458
• Users that belong to more than 100 groups are now always able to login. CONF-6292
PDF Export
• Exporting pages to PDF which include other pages will now have correct links and not lose images.
CONF-1155
Internationalisation
• Tree view of page hierarchy will not be truncated when using multi-byte character sets. CONF-5872
Confluence 2.2.8 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.2.
Confluence 2.2.8 has slower indexing than previous versions. There is a fix for that regression here:
CONF-6908
2.2.8 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after August 8th, 2005.
Confluence 2.2.8 is a minor bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved in this
release to determine if it is worth their while upgrading.
Customers still running Confluence 2.2.2 or earlier are recommended to upgrade, as a significant security
vulnerability was resolved in Confluence 2.2.3
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2 - 2.2.3, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.8
We are currently trialling a process of more frequent bugfix releases, to make fixes available as soon as
possible to those people who want them. 2.2.8 resolves 22 issues.
A few of the issues are noted below, see Issues Resolved for 2.2.8 for a complete list.
• Exporting a space as HTML now creates an index page which includes all the pages in the export.
CONF-6670
• Timeouts can be set for HTTP requests made from Confluence to RSS feeds and JIRA instances.
CONF-6697
• RSS Autodiscovery works in Safari. CONF-4607
• When a group is deleted, space permissions for the group are now correctly removed. CONF-6733
• Change default background colour from grey to white. CONF-6733
• Non-breaking spaces are handled correctly when indexing. CONF-6685
• Rich text editor respects leading spaces in noformat macro. CONF-6527
Confluence 2.2.9 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.2. 2.2.9 resolves an indexing performance regression introduced in
2.2.8, and includes fixes for external user management, and MaxDB and Sybase compatibility.
2.2.8 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after September 9th,
2005.
Confluence 2.2.9 is a minor bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved in this
release to determine if it is worth their while upgrading.
If you are running Confluence 2.2.8, but do not wish to upgrade to 2.2.9, we strongly recommend
installing the patch attached to CONF-6908 instead to resolve an issue related to re-indexing
performance.
Customers still running Confluence 2.2.2 or earlier are recommended to upgrade, as a significant security
vulnerability was resolved in Confluence 2.2.3
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2 - 2.2.3, you can
find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and
database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.9
2.2.8 resolves approximately 25 issues. See Issues Resolved for 2.2.9 for a complete list. A few of the
issues are noted below.
• LDAP users are no longer given the option to change their passwords in Confluence – CONF-6144
• External users belonging to more than 100 groups can log in successfully – CONF-6292
• External users can be removed from local groups – CONF-6832
Database Compatibility
Indexing
Confluence 2.2.10 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.2. 2.2.10 resolves an assortment of issues that were reported by
customers.
2.2.10 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after November 30th,
2005.
Confluence 2.2.10 is a minor bugfix release. Customers should consult the list of issues resolved in this
release to determine if it is worth their while upgrading.
If you are running Confluence 2.2.8, but do not wish to upgrade to 2.2.10, we strongly recommend
installing the patch attached to CONF-6908 to resolve an issue related to re-indexing performance.
Customers still running Confluence 2.2.2 or earlier are recommended to upgrade, as a significant security
vulnerability was resolved in Confluence 2.2.3
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x version,
you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory
and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.1.5 or earlier, please check the release-notes of the other major
Confluence releases:
Changes in 2.2.10
2.2.10 resolves over 40 issues. All these issues are listed below:
After much hard toil from the Confluence developers we are happy, nay ecstatic, to announce the
availability of Confluence 2.3 (known affectionately as Snowy).Snowy is the eighth major update to
Confluence. It supports clustered deployment as 'Confluence Massive', and introduces a people directory,
activity statistics plugin, personal timezone preferences, and the ability to access Confluence via the
Metaweblog and WebDAV APIs.
Confluence 2.3 is a free upgrade for any customer who purchased Confluence after January 4th, 2006.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward: you can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Installation Notes
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
New Features
Confluence Massive
Confluence is now a clusterable application. This means that it is possible to run multiple Confluence
servers behind a load-balancer, to provide high availability, and to scale Confluence beyond the capacity
of a single server.
Confluence Massive uses Tangosol Coherence to share data between nodes (and many other things
besides).
If you are thinking of running Confluence in a cluster, and need to know what is required and how it
works, you can read Technical Overview of Clustering in Confluence.
You can find instructions for installing a Confluence cluster here: Confluence Cluster Installation.
Cluster Licensing
Confluence Massive clustering is only enabled if you have a clustered licence. For information on
purchasing clustered Confluence licences, please check our pricing page, or contact our friendly
sales team.
In version 2.2 (Shoalhaven), we added personal spaces to Confluence. Because of the potential for the
proliferation of personal spaces we kept them off the Dashboard and search results by default, but this
made it quite hard to find people in a Confluence site.
If you find people whose personal spaces you want to follow, you can mark them as favourites from the
people directory. This will add their personal spaces to your 'My' tab on the Dashboard, and will also
make sure they're included when you search or make RSS feeds from your favourite spaces.
Activity Tracking
The activity plugin lets you know what's happening in Confluence: how many pages are being visited or
edited in each space or across the whole site, which spaces or pages are the busiest, who are the most
prolific editors.
The plugin also provides macros that allow you to embed usage data into a Confluence page: {usage},
{popular} and {topusers}.
Activity tracking does not work in a cluster, and will be disabled for clustered deployments. We're
working on making the activity tracker clusterable in a future release. You can follow this issue in
JIRA: CONF-7520
Confluence 2.3 bundles the Blogging RPC Plugin. This allows users to manage their News in Confluence
using one of the many available blogger-compatible desktop clients.
The Confluence WebDAV plugin allows users to mount Confluence as a shared drive, using the WebDAV
protocol.
This provides a familiar interface for anyone who uses Confluence as a repository for files: you can
browse your wiki straight from Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder; view Word or PDF versions of pages;
upload attachments and edit attachments in place; create, edit and move pages.
WebDAV is supported natively in Windows XP (as "Web Folders") and Mac OS X, although there are third-
party clients that may provide different functionality or compatibility. We have a compatibility matrix if
you're interested.
Experimental
WebDAV client support is currently experimental, and is disabled by default. You can turn it on from
the Plugin management page in the global administration console.
Improvements
Plugins
Other Changes
• Users can now choose to have dates and times displayed in their own timezone instead of the
server's - CONF-1026.
• Most Confluence configuration data has been moved from the filesystem into the database.
• The Clickr Theme is bundled with Confluence.
• HTML exports are more reliable for sites with non-ASCII page titles - CONF-4862.
• You can now get users from multiple LDAP repositories at the same time (or different search paths
in the same LDAP repository) - CONF-6034.
• Shortcut links can now have the substitution string in the middle of the URL (CONF-3246), and have
custom display text and titles (CONF-514).
• Confluence 2.3 was originally accidentally shipped with three testing-only language packs. Since
Sunday January 14th, the language packs have been removed from the distribution, but if you
downloaded Confluence before that date they will be present. These language packs are machine
translations, and are not intended for use on production systems (unless you're a native German
speaker and really want a good laugh). If you downloaded an affected copy of Confluence and
want to remove these packs, delete de_DE-1.0.jar, ja_JP-1.0.jar and ru_RU-1.0.jar from
confluence/WEB-INF/lib.
• You need to apply this patch to enable LDAP user integration : CONF-7585
• If you have problems restoring backups please apply the patch included in this issue: CONF-7584
• Due to class name changes, if you're upgrading from an existing system running:
1. MySQL - you need to edit confluence.home/confluence.cfg.xml and replace
bucket.dialect.MySQLDialect with com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect. More
information in this issue: CONF-7579
2. DB2 - you need to edit confluence.home/confluence.cfg.xml and replace
bucket.dialect.DB2Dialect with com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.DB2Dialect. More
information in this issue: CONF-7690
• Log file atlassian-confluence.log is not presently generated. Please see these instructions for
enabling it.
The 2.3 log4j.properties file doesn't specify a file for the FileAppender (because the necessary lines
haven't been uncommented). Hence the log files normally generated via the file appender, logs/
atlassian-confluence.log, is presently missing?
If you experience this situation and see errors in the logs such as:
• Please uncomment the following lines in the log4j.properties file located under confluence/WEB-
INF/classes and restart Confluence
(ie remove the #'s)
#log4j.appender.confluencelog.File=${catalina.home}/logs/atlassian-confluence.log
#log4j.appender.confluencelog.MaxFileSize=20480KB
#log4j.appender.confluencelog.MaxBackupIndex=5
Relevant resources
Confluence 2.3.1 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.3.
2.3.1 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after January 23rd,
2006.
Confluence 2.3.1 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.3. Customers
running Confluence 2.3 should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this release fixes
any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.3 and wishing to upgrade should use this version also.
• LDAP integration: Confluence 2.3 shipped with a broken user migration script for customers wishing
to integrate LDAP servers with their Confluence installation. 2.3.1 ships with a fixed version of this
script which can also be obtained from CONF-7585
• Upgrading with MySQL: Customers using Confluence with MySQL may have had difficulty upgrading
their instances to Confluence 2.3. This issue has been resolved in 2.3.1.
• Backup import: Confluence 2.3 users wishing to import backups into their Confluence instance
should upgrade to 2.3.1 or apply the patch listed against CONF-7584
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or
Confluence 2.3 version, you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.3.1
Confluence 2.3.2 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.3.1
2.3.2 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after February 12th,
2006.
Confluence 2.3.2 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.3.1 Customers
running Confluence 2.3.1 and 2.3 should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this
release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.3 and wishing to upgrade should use this version also.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or
Confluence 2.3 version, you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.3.2
Confluence 2.3.3 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.3.2
2.3.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after February 14th,
2006.
Confluence 2.3.3 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.3.2 Customers
running Confluence 2.3.2, 2.3.1 and 2.3 should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if
this release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.3 and wishing to upgrade should use this version also.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or
Confluence 2.3 version, you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.3.3
The Atlassian Confluence team is proud to present to you Confluence 2.4.2! What happened to 2.4 and
2.4.1? Let's just say we gave them a good workout.
Confluence 2.4 is the ninth release of Confluence. It introduces much awaited support for editable
comments, the ability to mail a page to groups of users and includes the usual slew of fixes since the last
stable release.
Confluence 2.4 is the first in a series of frequent, small releases planned for the first half or 2007, that
will help us get the functionality you want from Confluence, faster. For more information on our new
release schedule, you might want to read this blog post.
Confluence 2.4.2 is a free upgrade for any customer who purchased Confluence after March 13th, 2006.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward: you can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
New Features
Editable Comments
Say so long! to those annoying typos and ill-structured sentences as comments in Confluence are now
editable. Comments may be edited by the original author or the administrator for the space in which the
comment was posted.
Confluence has a ten minute grace period after the comment is posted in which updates will not be
flagged in the user interface. This is in acknowledgment of the fact that most edits within this period are
for correcting minor typos and formatting which will not impact the flow of conversation.
For more information, see the Confluence user guide: Editing a Comment
Confluence 2.4 ships with the Mail Page plugin allowing users to conveniently send the contents of a
Confluence page to other interested parties. You can easily specify who you want the page mailed to by
using a combination of:
• Email addresses
• Confluence user names
• Confluence group names
For security reasons, the Mail Page plugin is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature, an
administrator will have to enable it. There must also be a mail server configured in the Confluence
instance for this operation to be available.
For more information, see the Confluence user guide: E-mailing a Page
Improvements
Confluence 2.4 contains changes to the Confluence API that will affect any plugins that modify Page
Permissions (aka ContentPermissions). Some methods have been deprecated, some new methods have
been created, and one method now behaves differently from before.
Confluence 2.4 does not support having multiple view and edit permissions on a page. The Content
Permission API allows such a state, but it should be avoided. For example, if a Page has multiple
permissions set on it, these permissions will not be displayed properly via the user interface, and
the pages may not be returned appropriately in a search.
Summary of Changes
Deprecated methods
ContentPermissionManager.getInheritedViewContentPermissions(Page)
ContentPermissionManager.getInheritedContentPermissions(ContentEntityObject
contentEntityObject)
ContentEntityObject.getPermissions()
ContentEntityObject.getContentPermission(String permissionType)
Changed methods
ContentPermissionManager.addContentPermission(ContentPermission permission,
ContentEntityObject content)
Added methods
ContentPermissionManager.setContentPermissions(List contentPermissions,
ContentEntityObject content, String type)
ContentPermissionManager.getInheritedContentPermissionSets(ContentEntityObject
contentEntityObject)
ContentEntityObject.getContentPermissionSet(String type)
ContentEntityObject.hasPermissions(String type)
ContentEntityObject.removeContentPermissionSet(ContentPermissionSet set)
Removed methods
ContentPermissionManager.saveContentPermission(ContentPermission permission)
ContentPermissionManager.getContentUserPermission(ContentEntityObject
contentEntityObject)
ContentPermissionManager.onContentContextChanged(ContentEntityObject contentEntityObject)
ContentEntityObject.setPermissions(List permissions)
ContentEntityObject.clearPermissions(ContentPermissionManager permissionManager)
ContentPermissionManager.addContentPermission(ContentPermission permission,
ContentEntityObject content)
This method now adds a ContentPermission to the ContentEntityObject as one would expect. Previously
if a ContentPermission already existed on the ContentEntityObject, then any existing ContentPermission
would be removed. That is, the method really behaved as one would expect "setContentPermission" to
behave. As a result, any code that used addContentPermission in Confluence 2.3 or earlier, should now
use setContentPermissions with a single entry list.
Most methods that used to return a ContentPermission have been replaced with methods that return
a ContentPermissionSet. In some places we have used deprecation to point to the new method and
reimplemented the old method to extract the first ContentPermission from the ContentPermissionSet.
As usual, the methods on the ContentPermissionManager should be used rather than those
on the ContentEntityObject. The only ContentEntityObject method that should be used is
getContentPermissionSet. Even that method should be used only to display the existing Permissions. All
writes to the ContentPermissionSets should be performed via the ContentPermissionManager.
No changes have been made yet to the the XML RPC API. It does not currently allow modification of
ContentPermissions.
The Atlassian Confluence team is proud to present to you Confluence 2.4.2! What happened to 2.4 and
2.4.1? Let's just say we gave them a good workout.
Confluence 2.4 is the ninth release of Confluence. It introduces much awaited support for editable
comments, the ability to mail a page to groups of users and includes the usual slew of fixes since the last
stable release.
Confluence 2.4 is the first in a series of frequent, small releases planned for the first half or 2007, that
will help us get the functionality you want from Confluence, faster. For more information on our new
release schedule, you might want to read this blog post.
Confluence 2.4.2 is a free upgrade for any customer who purchased Confluence after March 13th, 2006.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward: you can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
New Features
Editable Comments
Say so long! to those annoying typos and ill-structured sentences as comments in Confluence are now
editable. Comments may be edited by the original author or the administrator for the space in which the
comment was posted.
Confluence has a ten minute grace period after the comment is posted in which updates will not be
flagged in the user interface. This is in acknowledgment of the fact that most edits within this period are
for correcting minor typos and formatting which will not impact the flow of conversation.
For more information, see the Confluence user guide: Editing a Comment
Confluence 2.4 ships with the Mail Page plugin allowing users to conveniently send the contents of a
Confluence page to other interested parties. You can easily specify who you want the page mailed to by
using a combination of:
• Email addresses
• Confluence user names
• Confluence group names
For security reasons, the Mail Page plugin is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature, an
administrator will have to enable it. There must also be a mail server configured in the Confluence
instance for this operation to be available.
For more information, see the Confluence user guide: E-mailing a Page
Improvements
The Atlassian Confluence team is proud to present to you Confluence 2.4.2! What happened to 2.4 and
2.4.1? Let's just say we gave them a good workout.
Confluence 2.4 is the ninth release of Confluence. It introduces much awaited support for editable
comments, the ability to mail a page to groups of users and includes the usual slew of fixes since the last
stable release.
Confluence 2.4 is the first in a series of frequent, small releases planned for the first half or 2007, that
will help us get the functionality you want from Confluence, faster. For more information on our new
release schedule, you might want to read this blog post.
Confluence 2.4.2 is a free upgrade for any customer who purchased Confluence after March 13th, 2006.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward: you can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Contents
1. New Features
2. Improvements
New Features
Editable Comments
Say so long! to those annoying typos and ill-structured sentences as comments in Confluence are now
editable. Comments may be edited by the original author or the administrator for the space in which the
comment was posted.
Confluence has a ten minute grace period after the comment is posted in which updates will not be
flagged in the user interface. This is in acknowledgment of the fact that most edits within this period are
for correcting minor typos and formatting which will not impact the flow of conversation.
For more information, see the Confluence user guide: Editing a Comment
Confluence 2.4 ships with the Mail Page plugin allowing users to conveniently send the contents of a
Confluence page to other interested parties. You can easily specify who you want the page mailed to by
using a combination of:
• Email addresses
• Confluence user names
• Confluence group names
For security reasons, the Mail Page plugin is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature, an
administrator will have to enable it. There must also be a mail server configured in the Confluence
instance for this operation to be available.
For more information, see the Confluence user guide: E-mailing a Page
Improvements
Confluence 2.4.3 is a maintenance release that resolves an assortment of issues users may have
encountered using Confluence 2.4.2
2.4.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after March 22nd 2006.
Confluence 2.4.3 is a recommended upgrade release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence
2.4.2. Customers running older versions of Confluence should review the list of resolved issues below,
and upgrade if this release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.4 and wishing to upgrade should use this version also.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or
Confluence 2.3 version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.4.3
Confluence 2.4.4 is a recommended upgrade release that resolves issues users may have encountered
using Confluence 2.4.3 or earlier.
2.4.4 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after March 30th 2006.
Confluence 2.4.4 is a recommended upgrade release that resolves issues users may have encountered
using Confluence 2.4.3 or earlier. Customers running older versions of Confluence should review the list
of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this release fixes any problems with their current Confluence
installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.4 and wishing to upgrade should upgrade directly to 2.4.4.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or
Confluence 2.3 version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Source Release
Please note that the source release for 2.4.4 is currently unavailable. We have scheduled a fix for this
which should be included in 2.4.5. Please see CONF-8007 for more details.
Changes in 2.4.4
Confluence 2.4.5 is a maintenance release that resolves issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.4.4 or earlier.
2.4.5 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after April 12th 2006.
Confluence 2.4.5 is a recommended upgrade release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence
2.4.4. Customers running older versions of Confluence should review the list of resolved issues below,
and upgrade if this release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.4 and wishing to upgrade should upgrade directly to 2.4.5.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or
Confluence 2.3 version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.4.5
Confluence 2.5 is a free upgrade for any customer who purchased Confluence after April 27th, 2006.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward: you can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Page restrictions give you the ability to choose who may read and/or edit any given page.
By popular request, page restrictions have been enhanced and can now be assigned to multiple people
and/or groups:
Many customers have been prevented from upgrading the Java runtime hosting their Confluence instance
due to CONF-4082, an issue which would prevent existing dynamic task lists from working with the new
JRE. This issue has been resolved in Confluence 2.5 allowing dynamic task list users to upgrade and
downgrade between Java versions without experiencing conversion exceptions.
You may now use the operator=AND parameter with the contentbylabel macro to select pages that
have all of the supplied labels. (CONF-4969)
Confluence 2.5.1 is a maintenance release that resolves issues users may have encountered using
Confluence 2.5 or earlier.
2.5.1 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after May 7th 2006.
Confluence 2.5.1 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.5. Customers
running older versions of Confluence should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this
release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.5 and wishing to upgrade should upgrade directly to 2.5.1.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or a
later version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.5.1
2.5.2 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after May 22nd 2006.
Confluence 2.5.2 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.5. Customers
running older versions of Confluence should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this
release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.5 and wishing to upgrade should upgrade directly to 2.5.2.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or a
later version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.5.2
2.5.3 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after May 30th 2006.
Confluence 2.5.3 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.5. Customers
running older versions of Confluence should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this
release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
In particular, 2.5.3 fixes a problem which could cause indexing to fail when extracting text from
unprintable encrypted PDF files.
Customers running releases older than 2.5 and wishing to upgrade should upgrade directly to 2.5.3.
This release removes the 'Shared Mode' setting from General Configuration. If you have shared mode
enabled you should disable it before upgrading.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or a
later version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.5.3
2.5.4 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license after June 13th 2006.
Confluence 2.5.4 is a bugfix release which resolves some significant issues in Confluence 2.5. Customers
running older versions of Confluence should review the list of resolved issues below, and upgrade if this
release fixes any problems with their current Confluence installation.
Customers running releases older than 2.5 and wishing to upgrade should upgrade directly to 2.5.4.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from another Confluence 2.2.x or a
later version, you can find instructions here.
We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before
upgrading!
Users upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for caveats regarding
the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Changes in 2.5.4
Confluence 2.5.5 is a recommended upgrade that resolves issues you may have encountered in
Confluence 2.5.4 or earlier. Confluence 2.5.5 resolves two security bugs, related to space permissions and
invalid characters in space names and keys.
Confluence 2.5.5 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license or
maintenance renewal after July 26th 2006.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. You can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Changes in 2.5.5
Patch for security issues
• space permissions
• invalid characters in space names and keys.
Server ID
Starting with release 2.5.5, Confluence will generate a server ID for you. Server ID has replaced License
ID on the License Details page. You will find the server ID useful when contacting Atlassian support.
Server ID:
Translations for rich text editor now compatible with Confluence language pack plugins
The rich text editor in Confluence shows text in tooltips, warnings and other messages. If you are using
Confluence in a language other than English, you will want to translate these messages as well as the
standard Confluence text.
• The translations for the rich text editor can be part of a Confluence language pack plugin.
• If your language pack does not contain translations for the rich text editor, the text will show in
English. (Before 2.5.5, it showed the 'key' value rather than English.)
• Partial translations of rich text editor messages are already included in the professional French and
German language packs. Full translation is under construction.
Confluence 2.5.5 is a recommended upgrade that resolves issues you may have encountered in
Confluence 2.5.4 or earlier. Confluence 2.5.5 resolves two security bugs, related to space permissions and
invalid characters in space names and keys.
Confluence 2.5.5 is a free upgrade for all customers who purchased their Confluence license or
maintenance renewal after July 26th 2006.
If you are running a release older than 2.5 and you want to upgrade, you should upgrade directly to
2.5.5. Refer to the upgrade procedure below.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2.x or a later version, you can find instructions here.
If you are upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier, you should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for warnings
about the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. You can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Changes in 2.5.6
• For details about the security fixes, please see the security advisory.
• CONF-8944 resolves a Crowd integration issue for Confluence 2.5.6 and later.
• The Crowd integration fix will be ported to previous Confluence versions in the near future - please
see CONF-9122.
Confluence 2.5.6 is a recommended upgrade that resolves a number of security bugs and other issues
you may have encountered in Confluence 2.5.5 or earlier.
If you are running a release older than 2.5 and you want to upgrade, you should upgrade directly to
2.5.6. Refer to the upgrade procedure below.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2.x or a later version, please see the Confluence Upgrade
Instructions.
If you are upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier, you should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for warnings
about the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Confluence 2.5.7 is a recommended upgrade that resolves two issues you may have encountered in
Confluence 2.5.6:
• Indexing errors claiming 'too many open files', caused by duplicate libraries in the Confluence web
application.
• Caching should be enabled by default for the LDAP configuration in atlassian-user.xml.
If you don't wish to upgrade to 2.5.7, but do want a fix for issue CONF-9251 ("Too many open files"
error during index operations), you can manually remove the duplicate libraries shipped in the Confluence
web application. Please follow the instructions on the JIRA issue.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. You can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Changes in 2.5.7
Confluence 2.5.7 is a recommended upgrade that resolves two issues you may have encountered in
Confluence 2.5.6:
• Indexing errors claiming 'too many open files', caused by duplicate libraries in the Confluence web
application.
• Caching should be enabled by default for the LDAP configuration in atlassian-user.xml.
If you are running a release older than 2.5 and you want to upgrade, you should upgrade directly to
2.5.7. Refer to the upgrade procedure below.
Upgrade Procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. We strongly recommend that you backup your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2.x or a later version, please use the Confluence Upgrade
Instructions.
If you are upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier, you should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for warnings
about the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Confluence 2.5.8 is a highly recommended upgrade that resolves some issues in the user management
framework and a memory leak in Confluence 2.5.x.
This release has been made available after the Confluence 2.6 release date. This 2.5.8 version is for
customers who want to fix the issues listed below, but do not want all the new functionality and theme
changes in Confluence 2.6 yet.
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. You can find instructions here. We strongly
recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
Changes in 2.5.8
Confluence 2.5.8 is a highly recommended upgrade that resolves some issues in the user management
framework and a memory leak in Confluence 2.5.x.
If you are running a release older than 2.5 and you want to upgrade, you should upgrade directly to
2.5.8, referring to the upgrade procedure below.
Upgrade procedure
Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. We strongly recommend that you back up your
confluence.home directory and database before upgrading!
If you are upgrading from Confluence 2.2.x or a later version, please use the Confluence Upgrade
Instructions.
If you are upgrading directly from 2.1 or earlier, you should also read the 2.2 Release Notes for warnings
about the 2.1 -> 2.2 upgrade.
Confluence 1.0.1
Over the course of the last month of supporting Confluence 1.0, there are a number of patches that
we have been distributing to fix specific problems our users have encountered. Confluence 1.0.1 is a
maintenance release into which all these patches have been integrated.
All the issues that were resolved for this release are listed below. We have not snuck in any other
changes: what you see here in the release notes is precisely what you will get. If you find something on
the list that directly affects you, or that you feel justifies the effort of an upgrade, then do so. Otherwise,
feel free to stick with 1.0.
Upgrade Procedure
If you have customised Confluence's user-management, for example to integrate it with LDAP or JIRA,
you will have to integrate your changes to account for the caching OSUser providers we introduced in
Confluence 1.0.1. See this document for more details: Confluence Caching OSUser Provider. Updated
instructions for integrating with JIRA user management are here: Delegate user management to use JIRA
logins
Otherwise
To avoid the possibility of data-loss, you should back up your ConfluenceHome directory and your
database before upgrading, and perform a full backup from within the application.
Changes in 1.0.1
In response to a loud demand from users, links to attachments using the [^attachment.jpg] syntax will
download the attachment file directly, instead of linking to an anchor in the destination page.
Confluence 1.0.1 resolves the following problems that were causing Confluence not to work with Sybase
ASE 12.5.1:
These bug-fixes may also improve Confluence's compatibility with other untested databases. They will
not, however, have any effect on Confluence's operation against PostgreSQL, MySQL or HSQL.
The Microsoft SQL Server database dialect was missing from the database setup page. It has now been
added to the list. Confluence has not yet been tested on Microsoft SQL Server, and the usefulness of this
option is not yet guaranteed. However, since the Sybase issues above are now resolved and SQL Server
belongs to the same family as Sybase, it would be well worth a try.
Users who were linking their user management to JIRA's using the supplied provider were experiencing
significant performance problems as a result. 1.0.1 introduces caching to the user provider, which should
speed up these installations significantly.
Under Confluence 1.0, the global "undefined pages" and "orphaned pages" reports did not properly
filter out pages that the user could not see. The user could not see the content of any page they did not
have access to, but they could learn of the existence of (and names of) pages and spaces they were not
permitted to see. This bug is fixed in 1.0.1
In Confluence 1.0, dates were written into backup files using a localised representation of the month. As
such, if you exported Confluence data from a server in one locale it might not import successfully into a
server with a different Locale setting. Confluence 1.0.1 still recognises the 1.0 export format, but its own
exports will write out dates in a locale-independent format.
As noted above, this means that data exported from Confluence 1.0.1 can not be imported successfully
into Confluence 1.0.
Previously, if you created a template containing no variables, then anyone attempting to preview or use
that template would have their browser hang in an infinite Javascript loop. Confluence 1.0.1 fixes this
bug.
The Atlassian Confluence team is delighted to present Confluence 2.6. We kept you waiting a bit longer
than usual for this one, but now it's here and it's packed full of goodies and looks cleaner and fresher
than ever before. Read on, to find that piece of functionality you've been longing for.
Confluence 2.6 is the eleventh major release of Confluence. This release is a free upgrade for any
customers who purchased their Confluence license or maintenance renewal after August 22nd 2006.
• Many thanks for your issues and votes. They help us keep improving our products.
• Here's a full list of issues resolved in 2.6.
2.6 highlights
Personalised 'Recently
Updated' section on
Dashboard
• Changes are grouped by person.
• Includes profile picture and a summary of
the change.
Labels included in
templates
• Include labels when adding a page template.
• New pages based on the template will
automatically include the labels.
• Read the documentation.
Back-dating and
renaming news items
• Set the date of a news item to earlier than
today, upon creation.
• Rename a news item at any time.
add screenshot of back-dating
Before running the Confluence Setup Wizard described below, please follow the instructions on installing
Confluence.
When you access Confluence in your web browser for the first time, you will see the Confluence
Setup Wizard. This is a series of screens which will prompt you to supply some default values for your
Confluence site. It will also offer some more advanced options for setting up data connections and
restoring data from a previous installation.
On this page:
above.
° Obtain a trial, free or commercial licence.
2. Type or paste your license key into the 'License Key' field, shown on the screenshot above.
Option 1: Standard Installation — Set up Confluence with the embedded HSQLDB database and default
settings. This option will also install a 'Demonstration Space' with some example content to get you
working with Confluence as quickly and easily as possible. You may upgrade to another type of database
later on.
• Choose the standard installation if you are evaluating Confluence or if you are new to
Confluence.
• This option is not recommended for production instances of Confluence.
For production use, we strongly recommend that you connect to an external database rather than
using the embedded database. The standard installation is therefore not suitable for production
installations.
Option 2: Custom Installation — Customise your Confluence instance to use your own database and your
own data.
The above screen appears if you have chosen a custom installation of Confluence. You can choose to use
the embedded database supplied with your Confluence installation, or to connect to an external database.
Option 1: Embedded Database — If you select this option, Confluence will use an embedded HSQLDB
database. You should only select this option if you are evaluating Confluence, or for demonstration
purposes.
You can migrate to another database later on, if you wish.
Option 2: External Database — If you wish Confluence to use an external database, select your database
type from the database dropdown list and then click the 'External Database' button.
Read more information about supported databases.
For production deployments of Confluence, we recommend that you use an external database to
ensure your data is kept safe and consistent.
• Character encoding:
° We strongly recommend that character encoding is consistent across your database,
application server and web application, and that you use UTF-8 encoding.
• Database name: When creating a new external database, give it the name 'confluence'.
You can choose to configure your database via a standard JDBC connection or via a server-managed
datasource connection. Choose one of the two options below.
Option 1: Standard Database Connection — This uses a standard JDBC database connection. Connection
pooling is handled within Confluence.
Screenshot: Standard (JDBC) Connection
• Driver Class Name — The Java class name for the appropriate database driver. This will depend on
the JDBC driver, and will be found in the documentation for your database. You will also need to put
the appropriate database driver 'jar' file in the server's classpath. For the standalone version, this
means copying the jar file into the common/lib directory.
• Database URL — The JDBC URL for the database you will be connecting to. This will depend on the
JDBC driver, and will be found in the documentation for your database.
• User Name — A valid username which Confluence will use to access your database.
• Password — The password corresponding to the above username.
• The size of the connection pool Confluence should maintain. If in doubt, just go with the default
provided.
• What kind of database you're connecting to, so you can tell Confluence which dialect it needs to use.
Option 2: Datasource Connection — This asks the Java application server for a database connection. You
will need to have configured a datasource into your application server.
Screenshot: Datasource Connection
• Datasource Name — The JNDI name of the datasource, as configured in the application server.
Note: Some servers will have JNDI names like jdbc/datasourcename; others will be of the form
java:comp/env/jdbc/datasourcename. Consult your application-server documentation.
• What kind of database you're connecting to, so you can tell Confluence which dialect it needs to use.
• Example Site — This option will load Confluence's 'Demonstration Space'. Select this if you are using
Confluence for the first time, or if you want the Demonstration Space for your other Confluence
users. The Demonstration Space helps to familiarise you with Confluence and what it can do for you.
You can then continue using your Confluence deployment as normal — there's no need to reinstall
later.
• Empty Site — Select this option if you are already familiar with Confluence. You will need to create
at least one space before you can start adding content to the site.
• Restore from Backup — Select this option if you want to use Confluence data from a previous
installation.
Option 1: Upload a zipped backup to Confluence — This option will load the data from a zipped backup
file.
To create a backup file from your existing version of Confluence, go to the 'Backup & Restore' section
of your Administration Console.
1. Browse for the relevant daily backup file or a file you have created via a manual backup.
2. Check 'Build Index' to build the data index, used for the search.
3. Click the 'Upload and Restore' button.
Option 2: Restore a backup from the filesystem — This option is recommended if you have a very large
daily backup file (greater than 100MB), or a daily backup file that is already on the server and doesn't
require uploading.
1. Copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence Home directory and then
refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear on the 'Restore Data' screen (pictured
above), in the box beneath the heading 'Restore a backup from the filesystem'.
2. Check 'Build Index' to build the data index, used for the search.
3. Click the 'Restore' button.
When the restore process has finished, you are ready to log in to Confluence. The system
administrator account and all other information has been transferred from your previous Confluence
installation.
The system administrator has full administrative power over your Confluence instance. This person
will be able to add more users, create spaces, and set further Confluence options. Please refer to the
overview of global permissions for more information.
1. Enter the following information to set up your system administrator's user account:
• Username — The username under which the system administrator will log in to Confluence,
e.g. 'jsmith'.
• Password — The password which the system administrator will use to log in.
• Confirm — Enter the same password again.
• Name — The system administrator's full name, e.g. 'John Smith'.
• Email — The system administrator's email address, e.g. 'jsmith@example.com'.
2. Click 'Next'.
9. Setup is Complete
Screenshot: Setup Complete
Congratulations! You have installed and set up Confluence. Click the 'Start using Confluence now' link to
open the 'Demonstration Space' in your Confluence wiki. This space contains some sample content and
ideas, to help you get started quickly.
RELATED TOPICS
• Character encoding:
° We strongly recommend that character encoding is consistent across your database,
application server and web application, and that you use UTF-8 encoding.
° Before setting up your database, please read about configuring character encoding.
• Database name: When creating a new external database, give it the name 'confluence'.
You can choose to configure your database via a standard JDBC connection or via a server-managed
datasource connection. Choose one of the two options below.
Option 1: Standard Database Connection — This uses a standard JDBC database connection. Connection
pooling is handled within Confluence.
Screenshot: Standard (JDBC) Connection
• Driver Class Name — The Java class name for the appropriate database driver. This will depend on
the JDBC driver, and will be found in the documentation for your database. You will also need to put
the appropriate database driver 'jar' file in the server's classpath. For the standalone version, this
means copying the jar file into the common/lib directory.
• Database URL — The JDBC URL for the database you will be connecting to. This will depend on the
JDBC driver, and will be found in the documentation for your database.
• User Name — A valid username which Confluence will use to access your database.
• Password — The password corresponding to the above username.
• The size of the connection pool Confluence should maintain. If in doubt, just go with the default
provided.
• What kind of database you're connecting to, so you can tell Confluence which dialect it needs to use.
Option 2: Datasource Connection — This asks the Java application server for a database connection. You
will need to have configured a datasource into your application server.
Screenshot: Datasource Connection
• Datasource Name — The JNDI name of the datasource, as configured in the application server.
Note: Some servers will have JNDI names like jdbc/datasourcename; others will be of the form
java:comp/env/jdbc/datasourcename. Consult your application-server documentation.
Next Step
RELATED TOPICS
Database Configuration
Confluence Setup Guide
Confluence User Guide
Confluence Documentation Home
• Example Site — This option will load Confluence's 'Demonstration Space'. Select this if you are using
Confluence for the first time, or if you want the Demonstration Space for your other Confluence
users. The Demonstration Space helps to familiarise you with Confluence and what it can do for you.
You can then continue using your Confluence deployment as normal — there's no need to reinstall
later.
• Empty Site — Select this option if you are already familiar with Confluence. You will need to create
at least one space before you can start adding content to the site.
• Restore from Backup — Select this option if you want to use Confluence data from a previous
installation.
Next Steps
Restore your data from backup, if you have chosen that option.
Start using Confluence — see the Confluence User Guide.
RELATED TOPICS
This option allows you to reload your data from an existing Confluence installation into your new
Confluence site during the initial setup procedure. You can choose to upload data from a zipped backup
file, or to restore from a backup file on your file system.
Option 1: Upload a zipped backup to Confluence — This option will load the data from a zipped backup
file.
To create a backup file from your existing version of Confluence, go to the 'Backup & Restore' section
of your Administration Console.
1. Browse for the relevant daily backup file or a file you have created via a manual backup.
2. Check 'Build Index' to build the data index, used for the search.
3. Click the 'Upload and Restore' button.
Option 2: Restore a backup from the filesystem — This option is recommended if you have a very large
daily backup file (greater than 100MB), or a daily backup file that is already on the server and doesn't
require uploading.
1. Copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence Home directory and then
refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear on the 'Restore Data' screen (pictured
above), in the box beneath the heading 'Restore a backup from the filesystem'.
2. Check 'Build Index' to build the data index, used for the search.
When the restore process has finished, you are ready to log in to Confluence. The system
administrator account and all other information has been transferred from your previous Confluence
installation.
RELATED TOPICS
If you are using the embedded database, the database files are stored in the \database folder under
your Confluence Home directory. See also Important Directories and Files.
Production instances of Confluence should use an external database. When using the default
HSQLDB database, you run the risk of unrecoverable data loss due to not being transaction safe.
• Corruption is occasionally encountered after sudden power loss and can usually be corrected
using this data recovery procedure.
• HSQLDB is still suitable for evaluation purposes, but the risk can only be eliminated by
switching databases. External databases may also provide superior speed and scalability.
Database Setup
Setup instructions are shown below. Click a database to review the setup guide and any known issues.
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Oracle
SQL Server
DB2
Database Troubleshooting
For solving database-related problems:
Obtain technical support from Troubleshooting Problems & Requesting Technical Support.
Often, DBAs will require that table creation be done manually. To find the required SQL statements, you
can use the script generated from our evaluation version's HSQLDB database.
If you are using Confluence in a production environment, data should be stored in an external database.
The embedded database is bundled for evaluation purposes and does not offer full transactional integrity
in the event of sudden power loss.
This document outlines migrating your Confluence data from the embedded database to a more robust
database such as Postgres or SQL Server. The following databases have their own guides:
• MySQL Guide
• Oracle Guide
• SQL Server
Migration Instructions
Install Confluence if you have not done so already. You also need to install the following on the
Confluence server:
• The <Confluence Installation Directory> is the directory where you unpacked the Standalone
Confluence download.
• The <Confluence Home Directory> is the directory where Confluence stores its data, which you
set by editing the confluence-init.properties file in Confluence Installation Directory/
confluence/WEB-INF/classes.
1. Visit the Database Configuration page to review any known issues and database setup for your
database.
2. Create a new schema using the correct database encoding.
3. Create a user with full read/write access to the Confluence schema, including the ability to create
tables.
4. If the database only permits users to log in from approved hosts (e.g. localhost), grant database
access permission for the Confluence server.
5. If the database is hosted remotely to the Confluence server, set up any firewall permissions.
6. Test the connection by using the database administration tool installed on the Confluence server to
log in to the database.
1. If you are already using an external database, use your database administration tool to create a full
database backup.
2. Manually create an XML backup of Confluence under 'Administration' -> 'Backup & Restore'. If you
have less than 100MB of attachments, check 'Backup attachments' when creating the backup. If you
have over 100MB of attachments, you should not check the 'Backup attachments' and instead you
should manually copy the /attachments directory in your Confluence home to a backup location.
This attachments directory will later be copied into the new home directory.
3. Download the backup file to a backup location.
1. Stop Confluence.
Done! Your old Confluence data should now be imported to your new database.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence should use an external database for production usage, as the embedded database does not
offer full transactional integrity in the event of sudden power loss. Confluence Standalone with mySQL is
well-tested and easily configured for production.
This document outlines setting up Confluence with the open-source MySQL database on Microsoft
Windows, migrating across any existing content. To migrate to another database such as Oracle, follow
this guide instead.
Migration Instructions
Install the following software:
• The Confluence Installation Directory is the directory where you unzipped the Confluence
install download.
• The Confluence Home Directory is the directory where Confluence stores its data, which you
set by editing the confluence-init.properties file in Confluence Installation Directory/
confluence/WEB-INF/classes
1. Start the MySQL Adminstrator and use it connect to the mySQL database server. If you are running
mySQL for the first time and are unsure of the login settings, just click OK to connect using the
defaults.
2. Go to User Administration and click the 'New User' button at the bottom of the window.
3. Call the user 'confluenceuser' and give them a password, click 'Apply Changes'.
4. Right click on the name 'confluenceuser' and choose 'Add Host From Which The User Can Connect'
from the pop-up menu. Enter the host 'localhost'.
5. Go to Catalogs, right click in the schema list at the bottom of the left hand column of the window,
and select 'Create New Schema' from the pop-up menu. Call the new Schema 'confluencedb'.
6. Go back to User Adminstration, click on 'confluenceuser' text, not the icon. Then select the
'localhost' which appears under 'confluenceuser' . Now go to the Schema Privileges tab located
on the RHS of the window. Here select confluencedb, and make sure the user has all priviledges
assigned to them by clicking the '<<' button to move the priviledges from the 'Available' to the
'Assigned' list. Click "Apply Changes".
This stage is only required if you have existing Confluence content you wish to transfer:
1. Manually create an XML backup of Confluence under Administration -> Backup & Restore. If you
have less than 100MB of attachments, check 'Backup attachments' when creating the backup. If you
have over 100MB of attachments, you should not check the 'Backup attachments' and instead you
should manually copy the /attachments directory in your Confluence home to another location. This
attachments directory can then be copied into the new home directory as describe later
2. Download the backup file to a backups folder
3. Stop Confluence
4. Open your Confluence home directory and copy the plugin-cache (plugins in ver 2.2.* and earlier)
subdirectory to the backups folder
1. Stop Confluence
2. Edit Confluence Installation Directory/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties and
change the confluence.home property to point to a new directory. e.g. if you had
confluence.home=c:/confluencedata
confluence.home=c:/confluencedata_mysql
This is your new Confluence Home Directory. (The name doesn't have to end in _mysql – that's
just an example)
3. Copy the file mysql-connector-java-3.1.xx-bin.jar from the directory where you unpacked
Connector/J to Confluence Installation Directory/WEB-INF/lib. (the xx depends on exactly
which version you download – MySQL updates the version number from time to time)
4. Start Confluence and set up the new configuration
a. You'll be asked for your licence key again. Enter it, and click the 'Custom Installation' button.
b. Under the 'External Database' heading, choose MySQL from the dropdown list and click the
'External Database' button.
c. On the next page, click the 'Direct JDBC' button.
d. Change the database URL by changing the database name 'confluence' to 'confluencedb', so
the URL looks like this: jdbc:mysql://localhost/confluencedb?autoReconnect=true
e. Enter confluenceuser in the User Name field, and the password you chose earlier in the
Password field
f. Click the Next button. If you get the error message Could not successfully test
your database: : Server connection failure during transaction. Due to
underlying exception: 'java.sql.SQLException: Access denied for user
'confluenceuser'@'localhost' (using password: YES)' verify that you have properly
given the confluenceuser user all the right permissions when connecting from localhost
1. At the 'Load Content' page, choose 'Restore From Backup', browse for the backup you created and
restore it. Otherwise choose either the example or empty site as you wish.
2. Stop Confluence
3. Open your backups folder and copy the plugin-cache (plugins in ver 2.2.* and earlier) subdirectory
to the new Confluence home directory
Done!
Related Documents
This database can only be set up by an Oracle database administrator. If you are not a DBA, you should
not attempt to set up this database.
Oracle has a history of being extremely difficult to set up. If you do not have access to an experienced
Oracle DBA in your organisation, you are recommended to select any free, scalable and easy-to-
install alternative rather than proceeding with Oracle. Users evaluating Confluence are recommended
to start with an alternative database and only consider migrating to Oracle after approval from their
DBA. Atlassian's technical support for Oracle setup difficulties will also reflect the high minimum skill
requirements for attempting an Oracle setup.
Schema Requirements
Confluence must be deployed to a schema in it's own, separate Oracle instance. This avoids a Hibernate
bug triggered by the existence of duplicate tablenames in other schemas, outlined here.
Database Incompatibilities
Orcale 9i and later are supported, please upgrade any older versions prior to installing Confluence.
Please check that your version of Oracle does not have any known issues:
Database Preparation
1. Perform any necessary database or driver upgrades. Download the latest compatible database
drivers
2. Create a separate instance of Oracle and apply any configuration tasks.
3. Create a Confluence user configuration and grant access permissions.
<Resource
name="jdbc/confluence"
auth="Container"
type="javax.sql.DataSource"
driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"
url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@hostname:port:sid"
username="<username>"
password="<password>"
connectionProperties="SetBigStringTryClob=true"
maxActive="25"
maxIdle="5"
maxWait="10000"
/>
jdbc:oracle:thin:@example.atlassian.com:1521:confluencedb
6. If required, choose different maxActive and maxIdle values. These set how many total database
connections will be allowed at one time, and how many will be kept open even when there is no
database activity.
<resource-ref>
<description>Connection Pool</description>
<res-ref-name>jdbc/confluence</res-ref-name>
<res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
<res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
3. Locate the Oracle JDBC database drivers for JDK 1.4, which comes bundled with your database. We
recommend using the thin drivers only. Copy ojdbc14.jar to the <INSTALL>/common/lib directory.
Confluence should now deploy using the Oracle database specified. Please read this comment on Oracle
database optimisation.
If you are planning to run Confluence on a Websphere application server and Oracle database, you should
read the information on Known Issues for Websphere.
We have received a report from a user that when an Oracle 8i database is configured to use 24-hour time
as the default format, an exception like this may occur:
...
One symptom of this problem is that Confluence may refuse to start after midday.
The workaround is to go to 'General Configuration' and set the default time format to "HH:mm".
This documentation applies to Confluence 2.1.x or older. If you have Confluence 2.2.x or newer,
please refer to Database Setup for Oracle}
Please note, we strongly recommend you install Confluence on a schema in a brand new database
on your Oracle server. If this cannot be accommodated, be aware that Confluence may not install or
operate properly. For more details on this limitation please see the issue filed here.
This installation assumes you are using the standalone version of Confluence and Oracle 9i. We have not
tested against older versions of Oracle, but have been told that it should work against Oracle 8i provided
you use the latest 9i drivers.
Note that some users have found that 9.0.1.0 does not work, while 9.0.2.6 does.
If you are using 10g you should use the 10.1.0.4.0 drivers – the 10.1.0.3.0 drivers don't work
when using a Tomcat 5.5 datasource, as the connection returned is a T4CConnection instead of the
OracleConnection which Spring is expecting.
• Directly after the <Logger.../> line, (before the next </Context> line), insert the following:
° You may want to choose different maxActive and maxIdle values: these are how many total
database connections will be allowed at one time, and how many will be kept open even when
there is no database activity
° Replace the username and password parameters with the correct values for your database
° In the url parameter, replace the word 'oracle-sid' with the name of the database your
confluence data will be stored in. Obviously also change the hostname and port.
In Tomcat 5.5 the configuration format has changed. The data source resource should be defined like
this:
<Resource
name="jdbc/Confluence"
auth="Container"
type="javax.sql.DataSource"
driverClassName="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"
url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@<hostname>:<port>:<sid>"
username="<username>"
password="<password>"
connectionProperties="SetBigStringTryClob=true"
maxActive="25"
maxIdle="5"
maxWait="10000"
/>
<resource-ref>
<description>Connection Pool</description>
<res-ref-name>jdbc/confluence</res-ref-name>
<res-type>javax.sql.Datasource</res-type>
<res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
• Copy the ojdbc14.jar to the common/lib directory (this jar is the oracle jdbc thin driver for JDK 1.4.
It comes bundled with your Oracle 9i database). We recommend using the thin drivers only.
To run Confluence using the SQL Server, you must create a database table and user, download the
database drivers and insert the connection details.
net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver
8. When prompted for the jdbc url, the format to use is:
jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://<server>:<port>/<database>
This was done specificaly for Oracle 9i but the indexing should work with all other DB's if you
remove 'bitmap' from the indexes which use it, and remove the parallel clauses.
Create Indexes
Also, ensure that all statistics are upto date for the Confluence schema ( Hibernate does not ensure that
stats are gathered ) by using
DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS
And yet more indexes ( These reduced physical IO by 80% on our database ) :-
Create Indexes
Create Indexes
Create Indexes
Create Indexes
The database used with Confluence should be configured to use the same character encoding as
Confluence. The recommended encoding is Unicode UTF-8.
There are two places where character encoding may need to be configured:
The configuration details for each type of database are different. Some examples are below.
jdbc:mysql://hostname:port/database?autoReconnect=true&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf8
PostgreSQL
Please note that international characters sets are only fully supported and functional when using
PostgreSQL 8.1 and above under Microsoft Windows.
Please make sure you check the following to ensure proper handling of international characters in
your database
When PostgreSQL creates an initial database cluster, it sets certain important configuration options based
on the host enviroment. The command responsible for creating the PostgreSQL environment initdb will
check environment variables such as LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE (or the more general LC_ALL) for settings
to use as database defaults related to international string handling. As such it is important to make sure
that your PostgreSQL environment is configured correctly before you install Confluence.
To do this, connect to your PostgreSQL instance using pgsql and issue the following command:
SHOW LC_CTYPE;
If LC_CTYPE is set to either "C" or "POSIX" then certain string functions such as converting to and from
upper and lower case will not work correctly with international characters. Correct settings for this value
take the form <LOCALE>.<ENCODING> (en_AU.UTF8 for example).
If your LC_CTYPE is incorrect please check the PostgreSQL documentation for information on configuring
database localisation. It is not easy to change these settings with a database that already contains data.
Before proceeding with the following changes, please backup your database.
This example shows how to change your database from latin1 to utf8.
1. Dump the database to a text file using mysqldump tool from the command-line :
mysqldump -p --default_character-set=latin1 -u <username> --skip-set-charset
confluence > confluence_database.sql
2. Open the SQL file in a text editor and change all character sets from 'latin1' to 'utf8'
3. cp confluence_database.sql confluence_utf8.sql
4. Encode all the latin1 characters as UTF-8:
recode latin1..utf8 confluence_utf8.sql (Recode utility available from http://directory.fsf.org/
recode.html)
In MySQL:
To support large imports, the parameter '--max_allowed_packet=64M' used above sets the maximum
size of an SQL statement to be very large. In some circumstances, you may need to increase it further,
especially if attachments are stored in the database.
See Troubleshooting Character Encodings for a number of tests you can run to ensure your database
encoding is correct.
Related Documentation
Before 8.2.2
The territory may not be important when using UTF-8, but it must be included.
DB2 Does Not Support Transaction Logging Of BLOBs Larger Than 1GB
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v8/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.db2.udb.doc/ad/
c0006327.htm
"With their potentially large size, LOBs can slow down the performance of your database
system significantly when moved into or out of a database. Even though DB2 does not allow
logging of a LOB value greater than 1 GB, LOB values with sizes approaching 1 GB can quickly
push the database log to near capacity. An error, SQLCODE -355 (SQLSTATE 42993), results
from attempting to log a LOB greater than 1 GB in size. The lob-options-clause in the CREATE
TABLE and ALTER TABLE statements allows users to turn off logging for a particular LOB
column. Although setting the option to NOT LOGGED will improve performance, changes to the
LOB values after the most recent backup are lost during roll-forward recovery."
Although one could set the length for the CustomClobType in BodyContent.hbm.xml field length to
larger sizes, say 2^31 to allow storing of BLOBs up to the size of 2 Gb, DB2 maximum length can
only be set to 2^30, 1GB.
DB2 Dialect class change (if upgrading from Confluence version 2.2 or
older)
If you are using DB2, and are upgrading Confluence from version 2.2 or older, the
'hibernate.dialect' property in the confluence.cfg.xml file needs to be changed to
'com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.DB2Dialect' like so:
<property name="hibernate.dialect">com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.DB2Dialect</property>
<property name="hibernate.connection.isolation">1</property>
Related Links
Interpreting DB2 error codes
When DB2 dies, it'll dump its error codes out in the SQL Exception:
You can find the meaning of the error code from the db2 command prompt with "? sqlxxxx" where xxxx
is the SQLCODE from the error message:
Explanation:
You may also like to use the SQL Message Finder to find information about iSeries SQL messages.
You can search by message ID, SQLCODE, or SQLSTATE value. You can also select an SQLSTATE
class code.
There is also an online reference for SQL Messages and Codes which is quite useful.
To prevent problems with character encoding, for consistency, we recommend to use Unicode character
encoding UTF-8 among all the entities of your system. See Configuring Database Character Encoding for
more details.
The Default storage engine for MySQL is MyISAM. This storage engine does not support foreign key
constraints or transactions. This may cause data corruption and is not recommended for use.
You can set the default Storage Engine for MySQL by passing the '--default-storage-engine=InnoDB'
option when starting mysql.
For users using MySQL with Confluence 2.2 (or higher), please ensure that you are using the latest
(5.1) MySQL Java Connector. Earlier versions of the MySQL connector have a bug which is triggered by
improvements in Confluence 2.2. These earlier connector versions will result in an error being recorded in
your logs on upgrade (and will result in unstable operation of Confluence)
You can download the latest MySQL connector from the MySQL Java Connector 5.1 download page.
Please be sure that you remove any older versions of the connector from your application server.
Don't use the debug version of these drivers (the jar file ending in '-g.jar'). This requires extra
configuration, see Installing the Driver and Configuring the CLASSPATH
If you get a connection error: Access denied for user 'confluenceuser'@'localhost.localdomain' this
may be because 127.0.0.1 resolves to 'localhost.localdomain' in your environment. Create a user
'confluenceuser@localhost%' to match any domain starting with localhost.
When specifying a character encoding as part of your mysql connection url (eg:
&characterEncoding=utf8), it is important to ensure that the specified encoding is compatible with
the default encoding used by your database. Note: if you do not specify a characterEncoding on the
connection url, the connection will default to the servers default character set.
There are known issues with MySQL 3.x and Unicode characters. Please see MySQL 3.x Character
Encoding Problems
MySQL Dialect class change (if upgrading from Confluence version 2.2 or older)
If you are using MySQL, and are upgrading Confluence from version 2.2 or older, the
'hibernate.dialect' property in the confluence.cfg.xml file needs to be changed to
'com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect' like so:
<property name="hibernate.dialect">com.atlassian.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
If the confluence installation hangs after creating the mysql jdbc connection, try setting the jdbc property
useServerPrepStmts to false.
Example:
jdbc:mysql://localhost/confluence?autoReconnect=true&useServerPrepStmts=false
If you are wondering why a large number of '!' marks are appearing in your log files, it is likely to be
caused by http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=11629.
User reports that adding a "useOldUTF8Behavior=true" parameter to the JDBC URL allowed Confluence to
work with this driver.
MySQL 5.0 is supported for Confluence 2.5 and above. If running previous versions of Confluence,
MySQL 5 as the database for Confluence is not supported. However, if it is used, the following exception
may occur in the logs:
A temporary fix for this is to manually modify the boolean_val column in the OS_PROPERTYENTRY table,
so that it is of type bit(8). Note that this won't allow you to restore a backup, as the first thing the restore
does is rebuild the DB.
Some users reported problems getting MySQL running under Tomcat, throwing an exception similar to the
following:
However, it is still possible to easily connect to MySQL from the shell and from PhpMyAdmin.
The problem seems to be a known bug and seems to be related to the hostname portion in mysql:users.
I figured out the problem. Changing "host" in mysql:users to "127.0.0.1" enabled Confluence to access
the database.
You can do it this way, but it seems you should ensure that the canonical host name is the first item in
the /etc/hosts line for 127.0.0.1. Make sure it's not localhost.localdomain but localhost. e.g.:
And then make sure you use the same thing, i.e. localhost in the GRANT line and the JDBC URL.
Inconsistency across these things is the root problem (and perhaps we can blame the JDBC Driver?)
If you are using MySQL 4 and prior, you may come across a problem with max_allowed_packet size.
In MySQL 3.23, the largest possible packet is 16MB, due to limits in the client/server protocol. In
MySQL 4.0.1 and up, the limit is 1GB.
To resolve this problem, you need to increase the value for max_allowed_packet. Make sure to set the
packed size when starting the server, not the client.
When upgrading to MySQL from another database, such as HSQL, importing the site backup often fails
with an error like this:
Such errors occur because usually MySQL evaluates unique key constraints and primary key constraints
in a case insensitive way. So if you have a space with the key "sp" and another with the key "SP", MySQL
will refuse to add the second one.
This problem is avoidable by setting the collation on the database to be case sensitive.
MySQL uses collations for sorting data and for evaluating uniqueness.
To set the collation to case sensitive when using utf8, use this command:
Note: The collation must be compatible with the character set. The name of the database in the
example is confluence.
To alter the collation on an existing database using utf8, use this command:
Note: The collation must be compatible with the character set. The name of the database in the
example is confluence.
For further information see the MySQL documentation on character sets on collations.
A problem that some customers have encountered is their Database connection timing out whilst in the
middle of performing a Manual Site Backup in Confluence.
This issue is indicated in the log files with the following Error Message:
The number of seconds the server waits for activity on a non-interactive connection before
closing it. This timeout applies only to TCP/IP and Unix socket file connections, not to
connections made via named pipes, or shared memory.
On thread startup, the session wait_timeout value is initialized from the global wait_timeout
value or from the global interactive_timeout value, depending on the type of client (as
defined by the CLIENT_INTERACTIVE connect option to mysql_real_connect()). See also
interactive_timeout.
If problems persist after making the changes, please create a new Support Ticket and our Support Team
will assist you.
This has been observed when everything is otherwise configured correctly: it all looks right, MySQL is
working, but at the final step, Confluence is unable to actually connect to the running database.
In my.cnf, check whether the skip-networking option is set. If so, comment it out, replace it with bind-
address = 127.0.0.1, and restart MySQL.
skip-networking prevents the MySQL server from communicating via TCP/IP, and restricts it to a named
pipe. In 4.1.22, this was deprecated and replaced by default with the correct bind-address statement,
with the observation that it does not open any realistic security vulnerabilities.
We recommend you to use the following configuration to run Confluence with Oracle:
• Regardless of what version of the Oracle database you are using, you should use the Oracle 10g
JDBC drivers. (Note: Oracle 10g JDBC drivers will not work with Oracle 8.1.6
see Oracle FAQ)
• We highly recommend to use the thin drivers.
Also see:
If you are planning to run Confluence on a Websphere application server and Oracle database, you should
read the information on Known Issues for Websphere.
We have received a report from a user that when an Oracle 8i database is configured to use 24-hour time
as the default format, an exception like this may occur:
...
One symptom of this problem is that Confluence may refuse to start after midday.
The workaround is to go to 'General Configuration' and set the default time format to "HH:mm".
There is an issue in versions of PostgreSQL prior to 8.0 that causes the database to do a full table scan
rather than an index lookup for many of the database queries performed by Confluence. This will cause
Confluence to slow significantly the more data it has stored.
While we fully support Confluence on PostgreSQL 7, we highly recommend upgrading to version 8.0 or
higher for this reason.
If you have downloaded and used an incorrect JDBC Driver version, you will see this error when you
attempt to setup the Database connection in the Setup Wizard:
You will need to download the correct JDBC Driver based on your PostgreSQL Database Version and also
the JDK you are using. Below is a guide to selecting the correct JDBC version from PostgreSQL's website:
Many other versions of the JDBC driver are available. This includes development versions,
compatibility with older JDKs, and previous versions of the driver.
To determine JDK/JVM compatibility this following list matches up versions of the JVM with the
JDBC specification implemented.
• JDK 1.1 - JDBC 1. Note that with the 8.0 release JDBC 1 support has been removed, so
look to update your JDK when you update your server.
• JDK 1.2, 1.3 - JDBC 2.
• JDK 1.3 + J2EE - JDBC 2 EE. This contains additional support for javax.sql classes.
• JDK 1.4, 1.5 - JDBC 3. This contains support for SSL and javax.sql, but does not require
J2EE as it has been added to the J2SE release.
• JDK 1.6 - JDBC4. Support for JDBC4 methods is limited. The driver builds, but the
majority of new methods are stubbed out.
There is also a matrix on the page which lists all supported versions for the respective PostgreSQL
database versions.
Reason
The default SQL Server dialect uses column types that do not support Unicode, specifically the char,
varchar and text column types. See CONF-4786 for details.
Solution
To add Unicode support, use the Unicode SQL Server dialect which uses nchar, nvarchar and ntext column
types. Unicode SQL Server dialect has the downside of halving the maximum length of each column from
8000 characters to 4000, as every char is stored in two bytes.
Enable Unicode SQL Server dialect on a new setup, perform these steps prior to 'Stage 3 - Database
Connection Setup' of the Database Setup For Any External Database:
1. Open the mssql.properties file within your Confluence installation folder. In version 2.6, this file is
located in the /confluence/WEB-INF/lib/confluence.2.6.0.jar file. jar files are similar to zip formats.
2. Comment the line: dialect=net.sf.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect
3. Uncomment the line: #dialect=net.sf.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerIntlDialect
4. Start the Confluence Setup Wizard
Confluence will not run correctly in this case. During installation of SQL Server, be sure to choose a case-
insensitive schema. Alternatively, make sure that you specify a case-insensitive collation when you create
the Confluence database.
Information on different collation options in SQL Server 2005 can be found in the Microsoft
documentation.
This can occur with jTDS driver 1.0.2 but is fixed in 1.0.3 - see the jTDS homepage . It will prevent
backups from suceeding and lock access to the database when viewing certain pages.
Solution
Upgrade to jTDS driver 1.0.3 or later from the jTDS download page.
We use a component in Confluence called Hibernate. According to Hibernate Documentation there may be
issues with the Microsoft JDBC drivers resulting in the error you are seeing.
Solution
Upgrade to jTDS driver 1.0.3 or later from the jTDS download page. You may also consider alternative
SQL Server drivers listed on the Hibernate page.
Login failed for user 'username'. The user is not associated with a trusted SQL Server connection.
(Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18452).
The cause of this error is that the SQL server has been configured to operate in 'Windows Authentication
Mode (Windows Authentication)' and doesn't allow
the use of SQL accounts.
In order to resolve this problem, change the Authentication Mode of the SQL server from 'Windows
Authentication Mode (Windows Authentication)'
to 'Mixed Mode (Windows Authentication and SQL Server Authentication)'.
To illustrate with an example, say the Confluence database login was 'confuser' — the table names would
be 'confuser.table1', 'confuser.table2', etc.
When performing a database backup and restore into the new server, the tables will still be
'confuser.table1' and 'confuser.table2'.
However, if the database user 'confuser' has not been created first on the new server then you can no
longer access the tables with a login of 'confuser', because although the database was copied across, the
login object was not. You cannot create the login with the same name at this stage as it will complain that
there is already an object in the database with the same name (the user object).
Confluence and JIRA shared user base management fails due to wrong casing of database columns and
names.
All versions of Confluence 2.3 require a patch in order to work with Sybase. This is downloadable from
http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-7925.
The Confluence installation includes a pre-configured HSQLDB database for evaluation purposes
only. For safe production use, you need to configure Confluence to use an external database listed
below.
Supported Databases
Confluence supports the following database systems, provided they are running on a Windows, Unix
(NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solarix, Linux), Mac OS X on X86 or X86-64 processors.
Column labelled 'Works with' as opposed to 'Supported in': We assume that Confluence works fine
with these database versions. But please be aware that we don't test these versions regularly and that we
may ask you to upgrade to a supported platform before we can provide more detailed support.
If your database does not appear on this list, please read the questions and answers about supported
platforms.
For Confluence 2.8 and later, zOS, AIX and HPUX are not supported; neither are processors other than
X86. If you can get these databases running on another operating system, we will try to help you but
may ask you to move to a supported operating system before we can provided more detailed support.
Please note that DB2 on AS/400 or iSeries is not supported, and DB2 on OS/390 or z/OS is not supported
either. (Issues with bigint data type)
If you have no preference, we recommend using PostgreSQL — it is scalable, free, and easy to set up. For
database setup information, see Database Configuration.
The following databases work with some workarounds and are supported for versions up to Confluence
2.7, and probably still work with Confluence 2.8. However they are no longer officially supported from
Confluence 2.8.
• PostgreSQL 7.1
• Oracle 8i, 9i
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• Sybase ASE 12.5.1
This document outlines how to migrate your data from your existing database to another database.
You should use this method when moving from the embedded DB to an external DB, or from one type of
external DB to another (e.g. Oracle to Postgres). If you are simply moving your DB from one server to
another you can just change the JDBC URL in <confluence.home>/confluence.cfg.xml (if you are using a
direct JDBC connection) or in the definition of your datasource (if you are connecting via a datasource).
1. Create a backup of your existing data. This is done from the Administration Console. Instructions on
how to create a backup can be found here.
2. Shut down and backup the Confluence Home Directory.
3. If you are already using an external database, please make a backup of it using the utilities that
were installed with it.
Note which plugins are currently installed/enabled, so that you can reinstate them later.
1. Create a new Confluence Home Directory. You can place this directory anywhere you like and give it
a name of your choice.
2. Open WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties file in your Confluence installation and change the
confluence.home property to point to this new Confluence Home Directory.
If your databases are not already configured for Confluence, refer to Database Configuration to setup
your database access.
1. Make sure that the JDBC drivers for your database are available to the application server. If you
don't already have the JDBC driver, please download one from here.
2. Make sure that your database is using a case-sensitive collation. Please see this issue for more
details: http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-7917
3. If you are running the standalone version of Confluence, copy your JDBC database driver (a .jar
file), into the confluence-install/common/lib folder.
4. Start up Confluence. You will see the Confluence Setup Wizard.
5. Select 'Custom Install'.
6. Select your database from the drop down list.
7. Select 'Direct JDBC' and then enter the details of the new database you want to migrate to.
Read the documentation on the Setup Wizard for more detailed explanation.
8. When prompted, restore the contents of the backup you made in Step One into the new Confluence
site
Your old Confluence data will now be imported to your new database.
1. Create a new Confluence Home Directory. You can place this directory anywhere you like and give it
a name of your choice.
2. Open WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties file in your Confluence installation and change the
confluence.home property to point to this new Confluence Home Directory.
Move the contents of your attachments directory from your old Confluence Home to your new Confluence
Home.
If your databases are not already configured for Confluence, refer to Database Configuration to setup
your database access.
1. Make sure that the JDBC drivers for your database are available to the application server. If you
don't already have the JDBC driver, please download one from here.
2. Make sure that your database is using a case-sensitive collation. Please see this issue for more
details: http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-7917
3. If you are running the standalone version of Confluence, copy your JDBC database driver (a .jar
file), into the confluence-install/common/lib folder.
4. Start up Confluence. You will see the Confluence Setup Wizard.
5. Select 'Custom Install'.
6. Select your database from the drop down list.
7. Select 'Direct JDBC' and then enter the details of the new database you want to migrate to.
Read the documentation on the Confluence Setup Wizard for more detailed explanation.
8. When prompted, restore the contents of the backup you made in Step One into the new Confluence
site.
RELATED TOPICS
Configuration Guide
Migrate to Another Database
Below you can find a link to the JDBC drivers for all currently supported databases. You will need to make
the driver available to your application server.
• PostgreSQL - Download the JDBC 3 driver version specific to your PostgeSQL version
• MySQL
• Oracle
• DB2
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - Link goes to recommended jTDS JDBC drivers
• Sybase ASE
The Confluence installation includes an embedded HSQLDB database, supplied for the purpose of
evaluating Confluence.
If you are using the embedded database, the database files are stored in the \database folder under
your Confluence Home directory. See also Important Directories and Files.
Production instances of Confluence should use an external database. When using the default
HSQLDB database, you run the risk of unrecoverable data loss due to not being transaction safe.
• Corruption is occasionally encountered after sudden power loss and can usually be corrected
using this data recovery procedure.
• HSQLDB is still suitable for evaluation purposes, but the risk can only be eliminated by
switching databases. External databases may also provide superior speed and scalability.
RELATED TOPICS
Purpose:
• Check that your application server can successfully query your database (either via immediate JDBC
connectivity or a Datasource in the context of your application server).
• Pinpoint problems in your configuration which may occur if the above is failing.
Functionality:
• Check that a JDBC Driver can be loaded into memory and view what is already loaded.
• Connect to a JDBC URL and do a 'select 1' from the database.
• Find a DataSource in the JNDI environment and do the above.
• View the System classpath (to ensure that the JDBC jar file is there).
1. Record the DB settings you are using for your direct JDBC or datasource connection in the 'Configure
Database' step of your setup
2. Download testdatabase.jsp to 'MY-CONF-INSTALL-PATH\confluence'
3. Rename 'MY-CONF-INSTALL-PATH\confluence\WEB-INF\web.xml' to 'backup web.xml' (This disables
redirection)
4. Restart Confluence
5. Go to http://MY-CONF-SERVER:MY-CONF-PORT/testdatabase.jsp
6. Check that your database driver is loaded into memory. If not, check the system classpath for
the JDBC driver file, and that the driver is in the confluence-install/common/lib folder as per the
instructions
7. Enter the DB settings you recorded and test the database. If an error appears, check that the db
service is running, the location matches, and that any users specified actually exist with the right
login and permissions. You may be able to find a workaround by googling the error.
8. After correcting the error, rename 'MY-CONF-INSTALL-PATH\confluence\WEB-INF\backup web.xml'
back to 'web.xml'
Notes
This JSP is bundled in Confluence 1.2.4 and onwards. It can be used with earlier versions quite easily.
If you use this utility, please let us know ways in which we could improve it or leave helpful hints for
others here.
For a comprehensive set of database manual that might be helpful for troubleshooting, please refer to
the following links:
• PostgreSQL
If you're still stuck after attempting the suggestions above, lodge a free technical support request with
information on your database setup.
HSQLDB periodically must update its files to represent changes made in the database. In doing so, it
must delete the current confluencedb.data file on the filesystem (beneath conf.home/database) and
replace it with a new one.
If an administrator issues a shutdown on Confluence in this period, data can be lost, and is typically
noticed by the error message, when starting Confluence up again, of 'User not found: SA' .
Users encountering this problem should seek to restore backups, contained in the backup directory
beneath confluence.home. If daily backups have been turned off, and no other copy of data remains, the
data is lost.
HSQLDB should not be used as a production database. It is included for evaluation purposes only.
Hibernate logging
It can be useful to enable detailed Hibernate logging when debugging problems with HSQL.
Connecting to the Embedded HSQL Database can be quite difficult. You may need to connect to the
database to retrieve information, or for troubleshooting purposes.
Please follow the instructions on how to you can connect to the embedded HSQL Database using the free
Database Administration Tool DBVisualizer.
The purpose of this guide is to walk you through connecting to Confluence's embedded Hypersonic SQL
Database using the Database Administration tool DBVisualizer.
Below are step by step instructions on how to Configure DBVisualizer and connect it to HSQLDB.
Prerequisites
Connection Procedure
Please ensure that you read and follow the instructions below carefully.
Alternatively, you can use HSQLDB's database manager. Just copy the value of
hibernate.connection.url in confluence.cfg.xml as the URL and you're good to go.
This may be useful for Database Administrators that need to manually create the Database tables.
Right Click and Select Save Link As here to download this image.
If you have received an error message while upgrading Confluence which said "HSQL Database needs to
be cleaned. Please run HSQL17To18PreUpgradeCleaner.", and referred you to this page, you need to do
the following:
Introduction
Sometimes it is necessary to have Tomcat serve different applications on the same context path, but
different host names. Most commonly, this is when trying to use a simple mod_proxy configuration with
Apache.
Tomcat configuration
Tomcat allows name-based virtual hosting, where the hostname of the request determines which
application processes it. The following configuration shows how two virtual hosts can be configured for
Jira and Confluence on the same Tomcat instance:
Below is a minimal configuration of Tomcat's server.xml which configures separate hosts for JIRA and
Confluence on the URLs above.
</Engine>
</Service>
</Server>
Points to note:
• the HTTP connector is accessible on port 8080, as per the URLs above
• the AJP connector in not included in this minimal configuration. If you want to mod_jk with this
configuration, you need to ensure you add it.
• in the Engine, the Confluence host is configured as the default host. The default host is used if the
request doesn't contain a Host header, or is accessed by a name the server doesn't recognise.
• because the above configuration uses name-based virtual hosting, you need to have entries in your
DNS server for "confluence-app-server" and "jira-app-server" that point to the application server
More information
After doing this, you can configure Apache virtual hosts to map subdomains like jira.example.com and
confluence.example.com to your application.
You can extract all the data present in your Active Directory onto a file using the following command
(please ensure you are logged in with sufficient rights to do this)
csvde -f test.csv
This command will perform a CSV dump of every entry in your Active Directory server. You should be able
to see the full DN's of users and groups.
When you attempt to run Confluence, you may get the following error:
Some of the libraries Confluence relies on to function make use of features of the Java language that may
be restricted by Java security policies. This does not normally cause any problems: the default security
configuration of most application servers will happily run Confluence. However, in some shared-hosting or
enterprise environments, security settings may be such that Confluence can not function.
The permissions required by Confluence to run are detailed in the sample policy file below. You may need
to give this information to your systems administrator so that they can be deployed with the Confluence
application.
grant {
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "accessDeclaredMembers";
permission java.lang.reflect.ReflectPermission "suppressAccessChecks";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "defineCGLIBClassInJavaPackage";
};
The minimum and maximum JVM heap space allocated to the application server affects performance.
Confluence administrators may wish to modify this value from the defaults depending on their server
load. This document only provides guidelines rather than rules, so administrators optimising for
performance should use this document as a starting point only.
Bigger is not always better for heap size. When optimising memory settings, consider starting by setting
the minimum heap size to 1/4 the available physical memory on the server and setting the maximum to
1/2 of the maximum heap. Avoid setting the minimum and maximum to be the same since server load is
normally variable. Being able to use less memory under low load results in slightly improved performance
as garbage collections can be made smaller.
Testing Resources
• Enable the verbosegc JVM parameter to assist in determining the memory size that minimises
overall garbage collection
• Use Page Request Profiling to gauge end-user performance
• If you normally perform manual XML site backups on your server, test your maximum memory
requirements by performing a site XML backup while the server is under maximum load
• If you do not create manual XML site backups, simply monitor the server while under maximum load
The maximum memory should be the total memory while in this state plus a buffer of at least 15%,
taking into account how your garbage collection performs. Never set maximum memory to a value above
85-90% of the available physical server memory as this results in disk paging. Always leave 10-15% of
available physical server memory unallocated to allow for OS background processes.
Users of the EAR/WAR version set their memory in their application server. For Confluence Standalone,
the heap space is set in the Confluence install directory.
If you are running Tomcat as a Windows service, you may need to run a regedt32 to increase
memory as in the article on increasing JIRA memory. Although the article discusses JIRA, it should also
be applicable to Confluence.
JAVA_OPTS="-Xms128m -Xmx256m"
Where -Xms is the minimum and -Xmx is the maximum memory available to Apache Tomcat.
Note: In newer Tomcat distributions the file may not exist. Feel free to create it in the ./bin directory.
All Confluence UI text is contained in a single Java properties file. This file can be modified to change the
default text, and also to translate Confluence into other languages than English.
\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties
The file contains name=value strings, and supports variable insertion such as
user.greeting=Welcome, {0}
For more information on replacing values, check out Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content. Note
that plugins store their text internally, so you must modify plugin text individually.
1. Stop Confluence
2. Under your install direcory, open \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence
\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties
3. Search for the text you wish to modify, replace it and save
4. Start Confluence
Common Modifications
• Rename 'Dashboard' by searching for Dashboard. To change "Dashboard" to "My Portal", change
dashboard.name=Dashboard to dashboard.name=My Portal
Introduction
Running Confluence behind a web server should be done for performance reasons in high-load
environments. In general, web server caching and thread management is far superior to that provided by
your application server's HTTP interface.
To run Confluence behind the Apache httpd web server, there are two main configuration options: mod_jk
or mod_proxy.
Mod_proxy documentation
• Using Apache with mod_proxy is the main documentation for this configuration.
• If you want to set up the common configuration of JIRA and Confluence virtual hosts, you can use
Apache's virtual hosts with separate application servers, then Tomcat's virtual hosts to run both
applications on a single instance of Tomcat.
Mod_jk documentation
• Using Apache with mod_jk is the main documentation for this configuration.
• You can follow a similar method to the mod_proxy documentation above for setting up virtual hosts
in Apache and Tomcat, if required.
The misleadingly-named mod_jk2 is an older method of connecting to Tomcat from Apache. Since
mod_jk2 is no longer supported by the Apache Foundation, we do not support this configuration, and are
not updating our mod_jk2 documentation. Mod_jk2 also has unresolved problems with Unicode URLs; you
need to use either mod_proxy or mod_jk for international characters to work correctly in Confluence.
Introduction
The Apache web server is often used in front of an application server to improve performance in high-load
environments. Mod_jk allows request forwarding to an application via a protocol called AJP. Configuration
of this involves enabling mod_jk in Apache, configuring a AJP connector in your application server, and
directing Apache to forward certain paths to the application server via mod_jk.
Mod_jk is sometimes preferred to mod_proxy because AJP is a binary protocol, and mod_jk supports
fallback and load balancing. (Please note that you need a clustered license for Confluence to function
properly in a load-balanced environment.)
The scope of this documentation is limited to configuring the AJP connector in Tomcat 5.x. Other
application servers may support AJP connectors; please consult your application server documentation for
instructions on how to configure it.
The configuration below assumes your Confluence instance is accessible on the same path on the
application server and the web server. For example:
The standard distribution of Apache does not include mod_jk. You need to download it from the JK
homepage and put the mod_jk.so file in your Apache modules directory.
# Put this in the main section of your configuration (or desired virtual host, if using Apache
virtual hosts)
JkWorkersFile conf/workers.properties
JkLogFile logs/mod_jk.log
JkLogLevel info
Configuring workers.properties
Create a new file called 'workers.properties', and put it in your Apache conf directory. (The path for
workers.properties was one of the configuration settings above.)
worker.list=worker1
worker.worker1.host=app-server.internal.example.com
worker.worker1.port=8009
worker.worker1.type=ajp13
In Tomcat 5, the AJP connector is enabled by default on port 8009. An absolutely minimal Tomcat
server.xml is below for comparison. The relevant line is the Connector with port 8009 – make sure this is
uncommented in your server.xml.
Points to note:
The most important setting in high-load environments is the number of processor threads used by
the Tomcat AJP connector. By default, this is only 15, and you should increase it to match Apache's
maxThreads setting (256 by default):
If you have problems downloading attachments with non-ASCII characters in the filename, add the
following to your Apache configuration:
JkOptions +ForwardURICompatUnparsed
More information
The Tomcat JK website has complete documentation on workers.properties and Apache configuration. You
can also find information there on how to use mod_jk with IIS.
Alternatives
If you're not happy with mod_jk, or find it too difficult to configure, you can:
• use mod_proxy, which works with any application server, and together with mod_proxy_html allows
complex URL rewriting to deal with different application paths on the web server and the application
server.
• You have an existing Apache-based website, and want to add Confluence to the mix (eg. http://
www.example.com/confluence).
• You have two or more Java applications, each running in their own application server on different
ports, eg. http://localhost:8080/confluence and http://localhost:8081/jira. By setting up Apache
with mod_proxy, you can have both available on the regular HTTP port (80), eg. at http://
www.example.com/confluence and http://www.example.com/jira. If you are running JIRA and
Confluence, we recommend this setup. It allows each app to be restarted, managed and debugged
separately.
Simple configuration
Set the context path
First, set your Confluence application path (the part after hostname and port) correctly. Say you want
Confluence available at http://www.example.com/confluence/, and you currently have it running at
http://localhost:8080/. The first step is to get Confluence available at http://localhost:8080/confluence/.
To do this in Tomcat (bundled with Confluence), edit conf/server.xml, locate the "Context" definition:
Configure mod_proxy
Now enable mod_proxy in Apache, and proxy requests to the application server by adding the example
below to your Apache httpd.conf (note: the files may be different on your system; the JIRA docs describe
the process for Ubuntu/Debian layout):
# Put this in the main section of your configuration (or desired virtual host, if using Apache
virtual hosts)
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
It is recommended that you specify the absolute path to the mod_proxy.so and mod_proxy_http.so files.
You will need to modify the server.xml file in your tomcat's conf directory and set the URL for
redirection.
Complex configuration
A complex configuration involves using the mod_proxy_html filter to modify the proxied content en-route.
This is required if the Confluence path differs between Apache and the application server. For example:
Notice that the application path in the URL is different in each. On Apache, the path is /, and on the
application server the path is /confluence.
For this configuration, you need to install the mod_proxy_html module, which is not included in the
standard Apache distribution.
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName confluence.example.com
# Put this in the main section of your configuration (or desired virtual host, if using Apache
virtual hosts)
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Proxy *>
ProxyPass / http://app-server.internal.example.com:8080/confluence
ProxyPassReverse / http://app-server.internal.example.com:8080/confluence
ProxyHTMLURLMap /confluence/ /
<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>
</VirtualHost>
The ProxyHTMLURLMap configuration can become more complex if you have multiple applications running
under this configuration. The mapping should also be placed in a Location block if the web server URL is a
subdirectory and not on a virtual host. The Apache Week tutorial has more information how to do this.
More information
• The mod_proxy_html site has documentation and examples on the use of this module in the
complex configuration.
• Apache Week has a tutorial that deals with a complex situation involving two applications and
ProxyHTMLURLMap.
• Using Apache with virtual hosts and mod_proxy shows how to configure the special case where you
want JIRA and Confluence running on separate application servers on virtual host subdomains.
Alternatives
Introduction
The Apache web server is often used in front of an application server to improve performance in high-load
environments. Mod_proxy simply redirects requests for certain URLs to another web server, so it typically
requires no additional configuration on the application server.
This page documents a very common configuration request: configuring JIRA and Confluence on two
Apache virtual hosts, running on different application servers. This is just a special case of mod_proxy
configuration.
You can use virtual hosts in your application server if you want to run JIRA and Confluence on the same
application server. There is a sample configuration for Tomcat you can use after configuring Apache.
Apache configuration
For this configuration to work properly, the application paths must be the same on both the application
servers and the web server. For both JIRA and Confluence below, this is /.
# Put this with your other VirtualHosts, or at the bottom of the file
NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName confluence.example.com
ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / http://confluence-app-server.internal.example.com:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://confluence-app-server.internal.example.com:8080/
<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName jira.example.com
ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / http://jira-app-server.internal.example.com:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://jira-app-server.internal.example.com:8080/
<Location />
Points to note:
• ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse directives send traffic from the web server to your application
server.
• The application path is the same on the application server and on the web server (both are /).
• Because the above configuration uses name-based virtual hosting, you must configure your DNS
server to point both names (jira.example.com, confluence.example.com) to your web server.
More information
For different ways to configure mod_proxy, see Using Apache with mod_proxy.
If you use Tomcat, mod_jk provides a different way of connecting Apache via AJP. You can also use the
above configuration with just one application server if you use Tomcat's virtual hosts.
If you are using JIRA as well as Confluence, please see this document instead.
Install IIS
Follow these instructions for installing IIS
Configure Tomcat
Add another connector to your server.xml file, directly after the existing <Connector ... /> tag
Then re-start Confluence, in the logs/catalina.YYYY-MM-DD.log file you should see the Jk is running:
1. Download the isapi_redirect.dll from the apache tomcat download page - click 'browse download
area' to search for the file.
• For example, you will find the win32 binaries here: http://apache.wildit.net.au/tomcat/tomcat-
connectors/jk/binaries/win32/ and if the current version is 1.2.25, you will download this
file: http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-connectors/jk/binaries/win32/jk-1.2.25/
isapi_redirect.dll.
2. Place the downloaded file in a directory c:/ajp_iis (the name of the directory isn't important, but if
you use a different one make sure to take account of this in the instructions which follow)
3. Create a isapi_redirect.properties file in the same directory as you put the DLL. You can use this
sample isapi_redirect.properties file if you have used ajp_iis as the directory name.
• Note that this sample properties file assumes that the dll is named isapi_redirect.dll. If
you want to name your DLL something else, you must edit this file.
4. Create workers.properties and uriworkermap.properties files. You can use the sample
workers.properties file and the sample uriworkermap.properties file.
5. Create an empty file named rewrites.properties in c:/ajp_iis
6. Enable the plugin within IIS
a. Using the IIS management console (Internet Information Services in Administrative Tools),
add a new Virtual Directory to your IIS web site. The name of the virtual directory must be
jakarta, as it must correspond with the first part of the extension_uri setting specified in
the isapi_redirect.properties file. Its physical path should be the directory where you placed
isapi_redirect.dll (in the example it is C:\ajp_iis ). When creating this new virtual directory,
give it execute access as well.
c. Restart IIS (stop and start the IIS service - not just the web server -- do this by right-clicking
on 'Local Computer' in the IIS Manager and choosing All Tasks, Restart IIS...). Ensure that
the confluence filter is marked with a green up arrow verifying that it is loaded and initialized
correctly. If the ajp redirector did not initialize properly, check the log file for errors messages
(C:\ajp_iis\ajp_plugin.log).
Other Configuration
If you want to run Confluence on a named context, rather than the root context (i.e. access it via http://
host/confluence/ instead of just http://host) you need to:
1. Change the path attribute of the Context tag in server.xml from "" to "/confluence".
2. Change the line /*=ajp13w in uriworkermap.properties to /confluence/*=ajp13w
IIS 6.0
1. If using IIS 6.0 you will also need to add the Jakarta Isapi Redirector to the Web Service Extension's
.
Troubleshooting
If you have problems, look in the System Event Log, the c:\iis_ajp\ajp_plugin.log and your confluence
logs.
RELATED TOPICS
JIRA's documentation on Configuring IIS with Tomcat, including how to integrate both Confluence and
JIRA with the same IIS instance. The Troubleshooting section there is relevant to Confluence as well as
JIRA.
Granting of permissions to use Confluence can be done on the basis of membership of a group, to a
particular user, or to the 'Anonymous' user. There is not an actual user named 'Anonymous', it is just a
name for a category of granted permissions.
In the security administration of Confluence, the 'Anonymous' user includes all logged-in users, and
anonymous users who have not logged in. That is, if you allow the 'Anonymous' user to do something,
you are allowing all users to do it.
To enable public access to a confluence space, you must give 'Anonymous' the following permissions:
• The global 'Use Confluence' permission. This permission determines whether a user can access
the Confluence installation at all, and is set by the site administrator in Administration -> Global
Permissions.
• The relevant space permissions. The 'Anonymous' user must have at least the 'View Space'
permission for a space to be publicly accessible. You set these permissions via 'Browse Space' ->
'Space Admin' -> 'Permissions'.
While these two permissions are the bare minimum necessary for public access to a space, you may
wish to give 'Anonymous' additional permissions if you want a space to allow anonymous comments, or
anonymous editing.
We severely warn against giving the 'Anonymous' user any administrative privileges, either within a
space, or especially globally over the Confluence instance. Giving administrative privileges to untrusted
users may lead to a serious security compromise of your site.
Related
1. Add the following to your web.xml file (insert it just before </web-app>):
<resource-ref>
<description>Test description</description>
<res-ref-name>mail/Session</res-ref-name>
<res-type>javax.mail.Session</res-type>
<res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>
2. Add the following to your server.xml file (anywhere inside the <context ...> tags)
You only need to specify the mail.smtp.port parameter if you are using a non-standard port for
SMTP.
3. Restart the server. Go to create SMTP mail server screen. For JNDI location, enter:
java:comp/env/mail/Session
sudo su - confluence
cd /usr/local/confluence/
tar zxvf /tmp/confluence-2.7.1-std.tar.gz
ln -s confluence-2.7.1-std/ current
# Edit current/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/confluence-init.properties, and set confluence.home=/usr/
local/confluence/home
Then back as root, create the file /etc/init.d/confluence, which will be responsible for starting up
Confluence after a reboot (or when manually invoked):
#!/bin/bash
# Confluence startup script
RUN_AS_USER=confluence
CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/confluence/current
start() {
echo "Starting Confluence: "
if [ "x$USER" != "x$RUN_AS_USER" ]; then
su - $RUN_AS_USER -c "$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh"
else
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
fi
echo "done."
}
stop() {
echo "Shutting down Confluence: "
if [ "x$USER" != "x$RUN_AS_USER" ]; then
su - $RUN_AS_USER -c "$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh"
else
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
fi
echo "done."
}
case "$1" in
start)
start
;;
stop)
stop
;;
restart)
stop
sleep 10
#echo "Hard killing any remaining threads.."
#kill -9 `cat $CATALINA_HOME/work/catalina.pid`
start
;;
exit 0
and set it to run at the appropriate runlevel (use sudo ntsysv on Redhat-based systems, sudo update-
rc.d confluence defaults or rcconf on Debian-based systems).
You should now be able to start Confluence with the init script. A successful startup looks like this:
Related Topics
launchd is the OS X component which manages long running processes - daemons or services.
There's a mismatch between how launchd expects a daemon to behave, and how the default startup
scripts for Tomcat (the application server used by the stand-alone Confluence distribution) operate.
Launchd expects the process it starts to run forever, but 'catalina.sh start' starts the JVM to run Tomcat
and then exits. Tomcat provides 'catalina.sh stop' to cleanly shut down Tomcat by connceting to a socket
which Tomcat listens on, but launchd stops daemons by sending them a signal, which simply kills the
process immediately if no specific handling is included.
To match Tomcat to launchd we need to write a wrapper shell script, which we add to $CATALINA_HOME/
bin:
#!/bin/bash
function shutdown()
{
date
echo "Shutting down Confluence"
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/catalina.sh stop
}
date
echo "Starting Confluence"
export CATALINA_PID=/tmp/$$
. $CATALINA_HOME/bin/catalina.sh start
This shell script starts Tomcat, and then waits for the process to complete, so launchd is happy that
Tomcat is still running. It also installs a signal handler, which calls the shutdown() function to cleanly shut
down Tomcat when launchd signals the script.
You can try this script manually - start it, watch Confluence start, and then type ctrl-C, and see
Confluence shut down cleanly (note that it won't shut down cleanly if Tomcat hasn't started yet - it takes
a few seconds for Tomcat to start listening on the shutdown socket).
This file needs to be placed in /Library/LaunchDaemons, which is the location for system-wide services
which are not part of base OS X.
1. The path to your Confluence installation has to be explicitly specified in four places. I don't know if
there's a better solution to this.
2. JAVA_HOME is set to use the default JDK. On 10.4.4 this is 1.4.2, if you want to use 1.5 you would
need to change JAVA_HOME to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.
3. You need to change the UserName to the user you want Tomcat to run as.
I confess that I don't understand the semantics of launchctl start/stop - stopping a daemon seems to
kill the process, but then launchd immediately restarts it.
Related Topics
If you are hosting Confluence on a Windows-based server, installation as a Windows Service offers these
advantages:
You can read more about Windows Services in the Microsoft Developer Network.
The guide below applies only to Confluence 2.2.0 onwards on Windows. Windows users running older
versions should use the Start Confluence automatically on Windows as a Service (Pre 2.2) guide.
echo %JAVA_HOME%
Note that any directory in the path with spaces (eg. C:\Program Files must be converted to its
eight-character equivalent (eg. C:\Progra~1)
3. Install the service with default settings with the command
4. In addition, to have the service start automatically when the server starts, run
When investigating memory issues or bugs, it may be useful to view Confluence's Garbage Collection
information. To turn on the verbose garbage collection, use the command
Related Topics
If you are hosting Confluence on a Windows-based server, installation as a Windows Service offers these
advantages:
The guide below applies only to versions of Confluence earlier than version 2.2.0. Users of 2.2.0 or
newer should use the Start Confluence automatically on Windows as a Service guide.
If a directory in the path has spaces (eg. 'C:\Program Files\..'), please convert it to its eight-
character equivalent.
3. Ensure the JAVA_HOME variable is set to the JDK base directory, with echo %JAVA_HOME%.
4. Run the following command, all on one line (or download it):
Once you've run this command successfully, you can start Confluence by running the following
command
Alternatively you can pull up the Windows Services page and start the service from there.
You will need to ensure that the %CATALINA_HOME%*, index and database directories are all
writeable by the user the service is running as.
Confluence should now be installed as a service, but will not automatically start up until the
next server reboot.
For databases and application servers, we try to pick a good cross-section, including open source options
and the popular commercial platforms. We then choose which JDK versions to support based on the
recommended environments for these servers.
Supporting a platform means we know how to get Confluence running in that environment, and can
troubleshoot Confluence issues within it. It does not mean we have any particular expertise beyond that.
As such, we may not be able to help with customising or tuning that application server or database.
If you are running Confluence on an unsupported platform, it doesn't mean you are completely on your
own. What it does mean is there is a limit to the level of support we can provide. The more an issue
looks like it is related to your application server or database, the more you'll need to work with us to help
diagnose and fix the problem. And at some point, if we still can't fix the issue, we may have to throw our
hands up in despair and ask you to move to a supported platform instead.
The following advice originally given regarding JIRA also applies to Confluence:
If you are technically minded, enjoy a challenge and (most importantly) are able to switch
platforms if things don't work out, we encourage you to try new things. Please report back of
your experiences. Keep in mind that even just repackaging Tomcat, vendors can horribly break
things (eg. JBoss 3's classloader), and that problems often arise in infrequently used parts of
JIRA (upgrades, bulk operations, plugins, concurrent operations).
If you just want something to work, we recommend sticking to what we know works. There are
plenty of free, high quality app servers and databases available, and few reasons not to use
them.
Q: If you write your application to standards like J2EE, JDBC and SQL, doesn't that mean it should run on
any compliant server?
The operative word there is should. Confluence is a complicated application, and we commonly come
across interesting edge-cases, places where servers have interpreted the specificiations differently, and
straight-out incompatibilities. Then, of course, each server has its own different collection of bugs.
Supporting a new platform involves a significant investment of time by Atlassian, both up-front costs to
set up new testing environments and fix any issues we might encounter, and the ongoing costs involved
in maintaining the application against this new environment in the future. As such, supporting a new
platform is not something we will do unless we know there is significant demand.
So let us know you're interested. File an issue in JIRA (or vote on an existing issue). Start a thread in the
user forum. Just keep in mind that your interest alone will not be enough to convince us to add support
for your application server or database: we'd need to see a number of votes on the issue, or a significant
level of interest in the forum thread.
Q: My organisation has standardised on an operating environment that Confluence does not support.
What can I do?
1. Run Confluence in the unsupported environment, with all the caveats mentioned above
2. Make an exception to your standard environment
By all means let us know that your preferred environment is not supported. However, even if we did
decide to add support it would be unlikely that we'd be able to do so in any timeframe that would suit
your deployment of Confluence in the short term.
or
This document will outline the steps to take to increasing logging on your system. This additional logging
will help us work out the cause of this error.
If you can not locate these lines in your log4j.properties file, please add them to the end of
it.
2. restart Confluence
3. redo the steps that led to error
4. zip up your logs directory and attach it your support ticket
5. if you are using Oracle and got a constraint error, please ask your DBA what table and column that
constraint (that is, CONFLUENCE.SYS_C0012345) refers to and add that information to your support
ticket.
6. open confluence/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties again and remove the 4 lines you added
in step 1 (the additional logging will impact performance and should be disabled once you have
completed this procedure.
Related topic
This guide will tell you how to upgrade from one version of Confluence to a later version. Choose the type
of installation you are upgrading, and follow the link to the installation instructions.
RELATED TOPICS
This document contains some basic instructions on how to run a SQL script on your database. This
document is not intended to be exhaustive of the databases we support. We still recommend that you ask
your DBA to perform this task if possible.
The following examples assume a database name of yourdb and a script file called myscript.sql. Of
course, the extension of the SQL script file does not have to be .sql. Any file can be used so long as it
contains SQL statements.
MySQL
PostgreSQL
• If you are running Confluence on a cluster, please see Upgrading a Confluence Cluster instead
of this document.
• If you are planning to change to a different database, we recommend that you complete the
Confluence upgrade first. Then follow the instructions on migrating to a different database.
Backing Up
Before you begin the Confluence upgrade, you must back up the following:
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
Hint: The steps below are for advanced Confluence users, who have applied special settings to their
Confluence server and/or Confluence look and feel
After upgrading your Confluence installation to a later version of Confluence, you need to consider any
customisations you have applied to your system and other special configurations:
• If you had previously installed Confluence/Tomcat as a Windows service, uninstall the service (to
ensure that the old Confluence cannot start automatically when the server restarts) and reinstall the
new one. For details please see Start Confluence automatically on Windows as a Service.
• If you were previously running Confluence on a non-standard port, edit your new <Installation-
Directory>\conf\server.xml file as described in Change listen port for Confluence Standalone.
• If you had previously defined a Tomcat datasource, edit your new <Installation-Directory>\conf
\server.xml and copy over the datasource definition from your old server.xml.
• If you were previously using any plugins, install the latest compatible version and disable any
plugins that are incompatible with your new version of Confluence. The easiest way to do this is to
use the Plugin Repository in the Confluence Administration Console.
• If you are using any customised themes, please check that they are displaying as expected. Some
further customisation may be required to ensure compatibility with your new version of Confluence.
• If you had previously customised the default site or space layouts, you will need to reapply your
changes to the new defaults as described here.
• If you had previously modified the Confluence source code, you will need to reapply your changes to
the new version.
• If you were previously running Confluence over SSL, you will need to reapply your configuration as
described in Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page Security.
• If you had previously modified the memory flags (Xms and Xmx) in either the <Installation-
Directory>\bin\setenv.sh or the <Installation-Directory>\bin\setenv.bat file, you may
want to make the modifications in your new installation. The parameters are specified in the
JAVA_OPTS variable.
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
The Upgrade Guide provides instructions for a standard upgrade, but it's not possible to cover all
the variations of installation sizes and versions. If this page does not provide you with a solution for
your particular circumstances, please raise a support ticket for help with your upgrade.
Here are some problems that customers have encountered, and the solutions:
1. Problem: If you are upgrading from a Confluence version prior to 2.6, you may see an error
message such as: Table 'confluence.bandana' doesn't exist.
• Workaround: You may need to upgrade to Confluence version 2.5 first before upgrading to the
latest version.
• Explanation: Refer to CONF-9959. The problem occurs when the Confluence license has
expired and the confluence.bandana table is missing from the database. If you upgrade
to Confluence 2.5 first, this will create the missing table. Then you can upgrade to the later
version.
• Fix: This problem was fixed in Confluence 2.7.2.
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
This page explains the recovery process should you mistakenly try to upgrade your Confluence
installation to a version beyond your current license entitlement.
License Warnings
During an upgrade an obvious indication that your license has expired can be found in your log file. You
will see a 'WARN' level entry similar to this:
[confluence.upgrade.impl.DefaultUpgradeManager] isUpgradeAllowed
Your license is now outside of it's support period. You need to renew the license before you can
upgrade to this version of Confluence.
When you try to connect to the Confluence instance, you will see the following warning screen:
1. Contact Atlassian Sales to arrange for a new license to be issued, as instructed on the warning
screen illustrated above.
2. Once you have received a suitable license, supply the license key to Confluence:
• Click the link given on the license warning screen, illustrated above.
• You will first be asked to log in as a Confluence administrator.
• Then you will be presented with a simplified license administration screen. Enter the
credentials of a Confluence system administrator.
• Copy the license key into the 'License' field and click 'Save':
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
This document tells you how to upgrade from one version of Confluence to a later version.
• The EAR-WAR edition of Confluence, deployed on your own existing application server. If you
want to upgrade your Confluence Standalone edition, which includes Apache Tomcat as the
standalone application server, please refer to Upgrading Confluence Standalone Edition.
Also, please check the new version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the
documentation home page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for
older versions.
On this page:
• If you are running Confluence on a cluster, please see Upgrading a Confluence Cluster instead
of this document.
• If you are planning to change to a different database, we recommend that you complete the
Confluence upgrade first. Then follow the instructions on migrating to a different database.
Backing Up
Before you begin the Confluence upgrade, you must back up the following:
# confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
• Remove the '#' and the space at the beginning of this line, so that Confluence no longer
regards the line as a comment. The line should now begin with confluence.home.
• Update the directory name after the = sign, to point to your existing Confluence Home
directory.
6. If you are using Tomcat, you need to update either your confluence.xml or server.xml (depending
on where you have defined the Confluence context descriptor) to point to the location of the
new Confluence installation (also remember to copy over any customisations such as a tomcat
datasource if you have one).
7. If you have delegated your user management to JIRA, LDAP or any other external user management
system, copy the following files from your old Confluence installation to your new Confluence
installation:
• <Installation-Directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/osuser.xml.
• <Installation-Directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/atlassian-user.xml (if you are
upgrading from Confluence 2.2 or later).
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Confluence (2.5.5 and earlier) and are
copying your existing atlassian-user.xml file from your previous instance, please
ensure that the hibernate cache parameter in this file has been enabled, to avoid
performance related issues. (NOTE: If you use Crowd for your user management, you do
not need to do this.):
After upgrading your Confluence installation to a later version of Confluence, you need to consider any
customisations you have applied to your system and other special configurations:
• If you had previously installed Confluence/Tomcat as a Windows service, uninstall the service (to
ensure that the old Confluence cannot start automatically when the server restarts) and reinstall the
new one. For details please see Start Confluence automatically on Windows as a Service.
• If you were previously running Confluence on a non-standard port, edit your new <Installation-
Directory>\conf\server.xml file as described in Change listen port for Confluence Standalone.
• If you had previously defined a Tomcat datasource, edit your new <Installation-Directory>\conf
\server.xml and copy over the datasource definition from your old server.xml.
• If you were previously using any plugins, install the latest compatible version and disable any
plugins that are incompatible with your new version of Confluence. The easiest way to do this is to
use the Plugin Repository in the Confluence Administration Console.
• If you are using any customised themes, please check that they are displaying as expected. Some
further customisation may be required to ensure compatibility with your new version of Confluence.
• If you had previously customised the default site or space layouts, you will need to reapply your
changes to the new defaults as described here.
• If you had previously modified the Confluence source code, you will need to reapply your changes to
the new version.
• If you were previously running Confluence over SSL, you will need to reapply your configuration as
described in Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page Security.
• If you had previously modified the memory flags (Xms and Xmx) in either the <Installation-
Directory>\bin\setenv.sh or the <Installation-Directory>\bin\setenv.bat file, you may
want to make the modifications in your new installation. The parameters are specified in the
JAVA_OPTS variable.
Here are some problems that customers have encountered, and the solutions:
1. Problem: If you are upgrading from a Confluence version prior to 2.6, you may see an error
message such as: Table 'confluence.bandana' doesn't exist.
• Workaround: You may need to upgrade to Confluence version 2.5 first before upgrading to the
latest version.
• Explanation: Refer to CONF-9959. The problem occurs when the Confluence license has
expired and the confluence.bandana table is missing from the database. If you upgrade
to Confluence 2.5 first, this will create the missing table. Then you can upgrade to the later
version.
• Fix: This problem was fixed in Confluence 2.7.2.
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
Upgrading Confluence Standalone Edition
Confluence Installation Guide
This document tells you how to upgrade from one version of Confluence to a later version.
• The Standalone edition of Confluence. The Standalone edition includes Apache Tomcat as the
standalone application server. If you want to upgrade an EAR/WAR edition deployed on your
own existing application server, please refer to Upgrading Confluence EAR-WAR Edition.
Also, please check the new version of Confluence which you are installing. Refer to the
documentation home page to verify the latest Confluence version and to find documentation for
older versions.
On this page:
• If you are running Confluence on a cluster, please see Upgrading a Confluence Cluster instead
of this document.
• If you are planning to change to a different database, we recommend that you complete the
Confluence upgrade first. Then follow the instructions on migrating to a different database.
Backing Up
Before you begin the Confluence upgrade, you must back up the following:
• If you are running Confluence on Windows or Mac, you can upgrade via the automatic Confluence
Installer (Method A below) or from a zip file (Method B below).
• Everyone else should choose Method B below.
If you are running Confluence on Windows or Mac, you can use the automatic Confluence installer to
upgrade to a new version of Confluence. Follow these instructions:
This method allows you to unzip the new Confluence installation zip file into a directory of your choice
and then edit the configuration files to point your new installation to your existing data files. Follow these
instructions:
# confluence.home=c:/confluence/data
• Remove the '#' and the space at the beginning of this line, so that Confluence no longer
regards the line as a comment. The line should now begin with confluence.home.
• Update the directory name after the = sign, to point to your existing Confluence Home
directory.
6. If you are running Confluence as a Windows service, use <Installation-Directory>\bin
\tomcat5w.exe to remove and re-install the Tomcat service.
7. If you are using an external database (i.e. not the embedded database), copy the jdbc driver jar
file from your old Confluence Standalone installation to the new Confluence Standalone installation.
The jdbc driver jar should be in either the <Install-Directory>/common/lib directory or the
<Installation-Directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory.
8. If you have delegated your user management to JIRA, LDAP or any other external user management
system, copy the following files from your old Confluence installation to your new Confluence
installation:
• <Installation-Directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/osuser.xml.
• <Installation-Directory>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/atlassian-user.xml (if you are
upgrading from Confluence 2.2 or later).
If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Confluence (2.5.5 and earlier) and are
copying your existing atlassian-user.xml file from your previous instance, please
ensure that the hibernate cache parameter in this file has been enabled, to avoid
performance related issues. (NOTE: If you use Crowd for your user management, you do
not need to do this.):
After upgrading your Confluence installation to a later version of Confluence, you need to consider any
customisations you have applied to your system and other special configurations:
• If you had previously installed Confluence/Tomcat as a Windows service, uninstall the service (to
ensure that the old Confluence cannot start automatically when the server restarts) and reinstall the
new one. For details please see Start Confluence automatically on Windows as a Service.
• If you were previously running Confluence on a non-standard port, edit your new <Installation-
Directory>\conf\server.xml file as described in Change listen port for Confluence Standalone.
• If you had previously defined a Tomcat datasource, edit your new <Installation-Directory>\conf
\server.xml and copy over the datasource definition from your old server.xml.
• If you were previously using any plugins, install the latest compatible version and disable any
plugins that are incompatible with your new version of Confluence. The easiest way to do this is to
use the Plugin Repository in the Confluence Administration Console.
• If you are using any customised themes, please check that they are displaying as expected. Some
further customisation may be required to ensure compatibility with your new version of Confluence.
• If you had previously customised the default site or space layouts, you will need to reapply your
changes to the new defaults as described here.
• If you had previously modified the Confluence source code, you will need to reapply your changes to
the new version.
• If you were previously running Confluence over SSL, you will need to reapply your configuration as
described in Adding SSL for Secure Logins and Page Security.
• If you had previously modified the memory flags (Xms and Xmx) in either the <Installation-
Directory>\bin\setenv.sh or the <Installation-Directory>\bin\setenv.bat file, you may
want to make the modifications in your new installation. The parameters are specified in the
JAVA_OPTS variable.
Here are some problems that customers have encountered, and the solutions:
1. Problem: If you are upgrading from a Confluence version prior to 2.6, you may see an error
message such as: Table 'confluence.bandana' doesn't exist.
• Workaround: You may need to upgrade to Confluence version 2.5 first before upgrading to the
latest version.
• Explanation: Refer to CONF-9959. The problem occurs when the Confluence license has
expired and the confluence.bandana table is missing from the database. If you upgrade
RELATED TOPICS
Upgrading Confluence
Upgrading Confluence EAR-WAR Edition
Confluence Installation Guide
Important Directories and Files
Site Backup and Restore
Database Configuration
How to run a SQL script on your database
Confluence sends its log output to standard out, so by default Weblogic does not record it.
To redirect Confluence's log output to a file follow these instructions Redirecting System.out and
System.err to a File.
From Confluence 2.7, logging will be to the application server logs until Confluence has completed its
initial bootstrap. Then all logging will be to <confluence-home>/logs/atlassian-confluence.log. See
Working with Confluence Logs.
You can see that the file served from Confluence is ~176 times slower!
Solution
We upgraded mod_jk from version 1.2.8 to 1.2.10 and the download speed improved significantly to
~12000 KB/sec.
Overview
Some of Confluence's macros, such as {rss} and {jiraissues} need to make web requests to remote
servers in order to retrieve data. If Confluence is deployed within a datacentre or DMZ, it may not be able
to access the Internet directly to make these requests. If you find that the {rss} macro does not work,
ask your network administrator if Confluence needs to access the Internet through a web proxy.
Proxy support is configured by passing certain system properties to the Java Virtual Machine on
startup. These properties are defined by Sun here: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/net/
properties.html
http.proxyHost and http.proxyPort indicate the proxy server and port that the http protocol
handler will use.
• http.proxyUser = username
• http.proxyPassword = secret
Reference: source
Please consult your application server documentation for how to provide system properties to the Java
runtime, or to a particular application server. Some examples of how to start up different application
servers with these system properties set are:
Defining JAVA_OPTS in your setenv.bat file will not have any effect on your proxy configuration if
you are running Confluence as a Windows Service. Simply because your application server will follow
its own configuration and will not load any batch files in your Confluence installation folder.
You may need to define the configuration in your Windows Registry. For example, if you are running
Confluence as a service with Tomcat 5 as the Application Server then you will need to modify
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Apache Software Foundation -> Procrun 2.0 -> Tomcat5 ->
Parameters -> Java -> Options and add the JAVA_OPTS parameter there.
NTLM Authentication
Confluence does not currently support NTLM authentication, and can not identify itself to a proxy server
in this way.
Other resources
Installing Confluence Plugins
Remote API
• Single Sign-on
Introduction
Understanding Confluence
Developer Guidelines
These documents are more general descriptions of How We Do Things Around Here. It's a good idea to
be familiar with these documents, but keep in mind that no rule is set in stone, and the existence of a
guideline does not absolve you from your responsibility to think.
Confluence is a large and complex application. This area documents some of the more complicated
aspects of its design. For a complete reference, please refer to the source code which is available for
download with all commercial licenses.
• Bandana caching
• Character encodings in Confluence
• Confluence Internals History
• Confluence Permissions Architecture
• Confluence rendering pipeline
• Confluence Services
• Date formatting with time zones
• HTML to Markup Conversion for the Rich Text Editor
• HTTP authentication with Seraph
• Persistence in Confluence
• Spring IoC in Confluence
• Technical Overview of Clustering in Confluence
• Velocity Template Overview
Confluence's Bandana subsystem is used for persisting configuration settings for Confluence and its
plugins. Any persistence mechanism requires careful thought with regard to updates. Transactions are the
main mechanism for controlled updates to shared data, and it's important that transactions are treated
consistently across all the subsystems involved.
Confluence 2.3 has moved Bandana data to the database in order for it to be shared among clustered
nodes. Using Hibernate meant that the updates done to the database were immediately transactional, but
the Bandana caching layer still needed to be updated to be transaction-aware.
This document describes the caching system used by Bandana in Confluence 2.3 which allows it to deal
correctly with transactional updates. The caching system may be used more extensively for other areas in
Confluence going forward.
Caching layer
The caching layer for Bandana is necessary because all the data is persisted as XML. When configuration
objects are retrieved from the data store, they are deserialized back into Java objects via XStream. This
deserialization occurs after the XML has been retrieved by Hibernate, and is a time-consuming process.
Because Bandana objects are used so frequently (at least one per request), a cache of configuration
objects, independent of the Hibernate cache of XML, is required.
The interaction between the key components in the Bandana caching system is shown in the flowchart
below.
As you can see from the diagram, the CachingBandanaPersister is solely responsible for reading and
updating the cache, only delegating queries to the HibernateBandanaPersister when the required data is
not already in the case.
Problems to overcome
Having a cache separate to your transactional data store (Hibernate) presents a few tricky problems:
None of these problems is insurmountable, but the solution is fairly complex. The Bandana caching in
Confluence 2.3 will have the following features:
1. Cache updates (except read-throughs) will be enacted on the Coherence cache only after the related
database transaction has been completed successfully.
2. Read-through cache updates will be enacted immediately.
3. All cache updates will use locking when they are processed to prevent lost updates.
4. All cache updates will be visible when reading from the same cache during the same transaction,
prior to commit.
These features are provided by a Confluence transactional cache, which is described in detail below.
Transactional cache
The transactional cache makes a best attempt at synchronising the data in the cache and the database
when a transaction commits. A transactional cache consists of two components:
1. Deferred operations cache, which keeps track of update operations to an underlying cache but
doesn't actually peform them.
2. Deferred cache transaction synchronization, which performs the deferred updates on the cache once
it gets notified of a successful transaction completion.
These two components collaborate with Spring for transaction management, and the locking and caching
subsystems in Confluence.
1. Database encoding - usually the most important; it is where almost all user data is stored.
2. Filesystem encoding - important for attachment storage (pre-2.2), reading Velocity templates and
writing exported files.
3. HTTP request and response encoding - important for form parsing, correct rendering by the browser
and browser interpretation of encoded URLs.
Problems generally arise when Confluence thinks one of the above encoding is different to what it actually
is. For example, Confluence might believe the database is using ISO-8859-1 encoding, when in fact it is
UTF-8 encoded.
Java always uses the double-byte UCS-2 character encoding for all char and String data. This means
that each of the encodings above defines how, at that particular point, characters are converted to and
from Java's native UCS-2 format into some other format that the browser, filesystem or database might
understand.
So when a request comes in to Confluence, we convert it from the request encoding to UCS-2. Then
we store that data into the database, converting from UCS-2 to the database's encoding. Retrieving
information from the database and sending it back to the browser is the same process in the opposite
direction.
If Confluence has the wrong idea about encoding for one of the above, it manifests itself in different
ways:
1. Incorrect database encoding - user data is corrupted between saving and restoring from the
database. This often happens after a delay, as we cache data as it is written to the database and
only later retrieve the corrupted copy from the database.
2. Incorrect/non-Unicode filesystem encoding - international filenames break attachment download/
upload/removal (pre-2.2); exports break with international content or attachments.
3. Incorrect HTTP encoding - incorrect encoding selected by browser, resulting in incorrect rendering of
characters. Changing browser encoding causes page to render properly. Broken URLs when linking
to pages or attachments with non-ASCII characters.
The Confluence character encoding is a configuration setting found in Administration > General
Configuration, and at runtime available in Settings.defaultEncoding. It is subsequently used in the
following parts of the system:
In summary, changing the Confluence character encoding will change your HTTP request and response
encoding and your Filesystem encoding as used by exports and velocity templates.
The database encoding is the responsibility of your JDBC drivers. The drivers are responsible for reading
and writing from the database in its native encoding and translating this data to and from Java Strings
Ideally, your database itself should be in a Unicode encoding (and we recommend doing this for the
simplest configuration), but that is not necessary as long as:
• the database encoding supports all the characters you want to store in Confluence
• your JDBC drivers can properly convert from the database encoding to UCS-2 and vice-versa.
The filesystem encoding is mostly ignored by Confluence, except for the cases where the above
configuration setting above plays a part (exports, velocity). When attachments are uploaded, they are
written as a stream of bytes directly to the filesystem. It is the same when they are downloaded: the
bytes from the file InputStream are written directly to the HTTP response.
In some places in Confluence, we use the default filesystem encoding as determined by the JVM and
stored in the file.encoding system property (it can be overridden by setting this property at startup).
This encoding is used by the Java InputStreamReader and InputStreamWriter classes by default. This
encoding should probably never be used; for consistent results across all filesystem access we should be
using the encoding set in the General Configuration.
In certain cases we explicitly hard-code the encoding used to read or write data to the filesystem. Two
important examples are:
Some application servers, Tomcat for example, have an encoding setting that modifies Confluence URLs
before they reach the application. This can prevent access to international pages and attachments (really
anything with international characters in the URL). See configuring your Application Server URL encoding.
Advice
In general, always set all character encodings to UTF-8. That includes database, JDBC drivers, application
server, filesystem and Confluence.
In certain isolated cases (e.g. Microsoft Windows), it might not be possible to use a fully Unicode
filesystem (that is, a default Windows install doesn't support Unicode filenames properly). If so, stick
with UTF-8 for the other two and be aware that your operating system might have limitations around
international attachments (pre-2.2), backup and restore of international data, etc.
A brief history of Confluence noting when major features or internal changes were introduced. See the
release notes for full details.
Confluence 2.6
Redesign of recent updates, children web UI. Introduced classic theme which maintains old look and feel.
Confluence 2.5.5
Server ID support.
Confluence 2.5
Confluence 2.4
Editable comments.
Confluence 2.3
Changed from EhCache caching layer to Tangosol Coherence. This was for both application caches and
Hibernate second-level caches.
Moved Bandana (configuration framework) storage from home directory (/config/) to the BANDANA
table in the database.
Confluence 2.2
Personal spaces.
Confluence 2.1
Confluence 2.0
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
The PermissionManager
The core API for checking permissions in Confluence is through the PermissionManager (javadoc). The
two most important methods on this interface are:
So, for example. If you have a page, and want to determine if a user is able to edit it:
• Permissions are defined as constants on the Permission interface (javadoc). They are VIEW, EDIT,
EXPORT, REMOVE, SET_PERMISSIONS and ADMINISTER.
• If the supplied user is null, the anonymous permission is checked
• For the purpose of checking create permissions, the "containing" object is not the same as the
parent. You test if a page can be created in a space, and a comment within a page, not within its
parent page or comment.
• There is a special object – PermissionManager.TARGET_APPLICATION – that represents Confluence
itself and is used for checking global permissions
• Some permission checks don't make sense, for example checking if you can REMOVE
TARGET_APPLICATION, or checking if you can administer a page. Checking a nonsensical permission
will result in an IllegalStateException
• Similarly, if you check permissions against a type of object that the PermissionManager doesn't
know how to check permissions against (i.e. it doesn't have a delegate for that class, see below), it
will throw an IllegalArgumentException.
Permission Inheritance
The system does not cater for any inheritance of permissions. having Permission.ADMINISTER against an
object does not imply that you also have Permission.EDIT.
However, certain permissions are considered "guard permissions". For example, permission to VIEW
TARGET_APPLICATION is required to do anything in Confluence (it's generally referred to as "Use
Confluence" permission). Similarly, permission to VIEW a particular space is required to do anything else
in that space. If you are modifying Confluence permissions through the UI, removing a guard permission
from a user or group will also remove any dependent permissions that user/group might have. If you are
modifying Confluence permissions programatically, you are responsible for making sure they end up in a
sensible state w.r.t guard permissions.
PermissionManager Quirks
• The PermissionManager always checks to ensure a user is not deactivated, and that a user has the
"Use Confluence" guard permission.
• The PermissionManager does not check if the user is a member of the super-user confluence-
administrators group. If you want super-users to override your permission check, you have to do
it manually.
For every type of target object (or container in the case of create permissions) there is a corresponding
PermissionDelegate (javadoc) that performs the actual checks. The code should be reasonably self-
explanatory
Shortcuts
Finding all spaces for which the user has a particular permission is a common, and reasonably expensive
operation in instances with large numbers of spaces. For this reason we have a number of shortcut
methods on SpaceManager that go straight to the database:
• getPermittedSpaces – get all spaces for which a user has VIEW permission
• getPermittedSpacesByType – get all spaces of a certain SpaceType for which the user has VIEW
permission
• getSpacesEditableByUser – get all spaces in which the user can create or edit pages
• getEditableSpacesByType – get all spaces of a certain SpaceType in which the user can create or
edit pages
Note: These operations are still not cheap, especially in situations where the user being checked may be
a member of a large number of groups.
Searching / Lucene
The Lucene index contains enough information for searches to determine if particular results are visible to
the user performing the search. So long as you're not going direct to the Lucene index yourself, and use
one of Confluence's search APIs to find content, the content returned should not require any more tests
for VIEW permission.
PermissionCheckDispatcher
The PermissionCheckDispatcher allows you to check if a particular user has access to a certain
Confluence URL. It will only work if the target of the URL is a WebWork action (it works by instantiating
the action referred to by that URL, filling in all the relevant form values, and calling isPermitted on the
action).
The PermissionCheckDispatcher used to be the preferred way of testing whether or not to display a
link in the web UI. However, its use is being phased out because it can be very slow. Do not use the
PermissionCheckDispatcher for new code. Instead, use the PermissionManager directly. If you are in
UI code, use the PermissionHelper (javadoc), a convenience class that is placed in the Velocity context
to make permission checks more Velocity-friendly.
SpacePermissionManager
The SpacePermissionManager is a low-level API for directly manipulating user permissions. You
should not use the SpacePermissionManager for checking permissions, because it tightly couples
your permission check to the internal representation of permissions in the database. Use the
PermissionManager for all permission checks.
To make it possible to use a new type of object as the subject of a permissions check, you will need to:
1. Ask if this permission is really necessary? For example a lot of things that look like they should
be permissions are really "create" permissions (like "can comment on page" is really "can create
(comment, page)"
2. Add a new method to the PermissionDelegate interface.
3. For each existing PermissionDelegate, implement your new method. Throw
IllegalStateException if the permission is not relevant to that delegate's object
4. Add a new constant to the Permission interface to represent your permission (see the existing
examples)
To Do
• Permissions checking on labels (add, remove) are broken, and still being done via page permission
checks
• We should probably throw UnsupportedOperationException for bogus checks instead of
IllegalStateException
• Currently create permissions are tested against container, not parent. a
hasCreatePermission(user, container, parent, klass) could be useful
Rendering frameworks
There are two frameworks that do the template rendering in Confluence: Webwork and Sitemesh. The
confusing bit is that both of them use Velocity as their templating engine. We try to distinguish them by
using *.vm for templates processed by Webwork, and *.vmd for those processed by Sitemesh.
Rendering contexts
The two Sitemesh contexts are pretty much the same, but the Webwork velocity context contains a lot
more stuff than either of the Sitemesh ones.
Rendering pipeline
directive
° Any #decoratorParam() directives are processed by the ParamDirective class, which pushes
decorators.xml
° ApplyDecoratorDirective launches Sitemesh on a decorator template (*.vmd) with context
defined in ApplyDecoratorDirective
° Sitemesh returns decorated content
You can find out which beans are in which context by looking in the classes above. A full list would be too
long to include here. Note that even though the ApplyDecoratorDirective launches a Sitemesh decorator
template, the Sitemesh template doesn't get automatic access to the Velocity context. The only bits that
are passed through are done with the #decoratorParam() directive.
Wow, pretty complicated. But it lets us do cool stuff like implement custom themes, apply layouts and
more.
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
Here's a quick overview of some of the services defined in Confluence (for more details of what a service
is, see the High Level Architecture Overview).
Current Services
Database Service
The reason for splitting the service into two files is to allow for easier testing.
productionDatabaseContext.xml extracts the database configuration from the bootstrap configuration,
and brings up Confluence with the Tangosol Coherence clustered cache. If you substitute that one file
with testDatabaseContext.xml you will instead get a pre-configured in-memory HSQL database and in-
memory caching.
Because configuring Hibernate dynamically is non-trivial, the database service is unavoidably dependent
on every class we want to persist via Hibernate. You can see this in the list of .hbm.xml files loaded in
databaseSubsystemContext.xml.
Bandana Service
Provides a generic configuration/preferences storing service using XStream to serialize POJO configuration
objects to XML. Confluence's bandana service persists to the database.
Cache Service
Provides centralised caching services backed by Tangosol Coherence, and a transactional cache
service. Defined in cacheServiceContext.xml. In integration tests, you might want to substitute
testCacheServiceContext.xml which provides a basic in-memory cache without the overhead of
Coherence.
Event Service
Provides a simple service for producing and consuming events. Defined in eventServiceContext.xml.
Confluence's event service is cluster-aware, distinguishing between events that are limited to a single
node of the cluster, and events that must be broadcast to every node.
Plugin Service
The plugin system hasn't been entirely service-ised yet, as all the different plugin module loaders result
in dependencies back to whatever subsystem they're being plugged into.
A central manager for queues in Confluence. I'm not entirely sure this should exist as it currently adds no
value whatsoever beyond being a lookup mechanism, which Spring does already.
Not Services
Pretty obvious next candidate for servicization, but possibly tricky because the Spring/Quartz integration
might not be very friendly.
Backup/Restore
User Management
I wasn't going to mess with user-management while there was a different atlassian-user task in the
release pipeline.
Wiki Rendering
This seems like a reasonably trivial candidate to convert to a service. There's only one dependency on
non-service code (the image renderer depends on the attachment manager).
The sending and receiving of email is currently a mess of singleton configurations, clients sticking mail
jobs directly on the queue, and very little going through Spring at all. This should be fixed.
It would be nice to have Confluence provide a service for accessing the outside world so we can throttle
number of connections, provide central configuration of time-outs and authentication, and so on.
Image Manipulation
Right now we have a thumbnail manager that lives with attachments, but it would be nice to make this
more generic, and at least support multiple thumbnail sizes.
Introduction
Confluence 2.3 supports a time zone preference for a user. This means all dates in the system must be
formatted using the same process to appear in the user's time zone correctly. This document describes
how dates are formatted in Confluence. It may be useful to plugin developers who need to format dates
in a special way inside Confluence.
DateFormatter
The new class introduced in Confluence 2.3, DateFormatter, allows formatting in the user's timezone. See
the full javadoc for details, but methods include:
• String format(Date date) – Formats the date and returns it as a string, using the date formatting
pattern.
• String formatDateTime(Date date) – Formats the date and returns it as a string, using the date-
time formatting pattern.
• String formatServerDate(Date date) – Same as format(Date), but doesn't perform time zone
conversion.
Most methods format the time in the user's time zone. The 'server' methods format the time in the
server's time zone.
In Velocity, using the DateFormatter is easy because it is in the Velocity context. In a normal Velocity
template (*.vm), such as an action result, you might use it like this:
$dateFormatter.format($action.myBirthdayDate)
If you want to use the DateFormatter in a Velocity decorator (*.vmd), such as a custom layout or theme,
you need to access it via its getter on the action:
$action.dateFormatter.format( $page.lastModificationDate )
The DateFormatter is constructed by the ConfluenceUserPreferences object, which can be obtained from
the UserAccessor. The code below gives a demonstration:
The userAccessor and formatSettingsManager are Spring beans which can be injected into
your object. You can usually get the user from the context of your macro or plugin, or using
AuthenticatedUserThreadLocal.getUser().
Introduction
This component enables the rich Text Editor by converting HTML (created by the renderer, then edited by
the user) into Confluence Wiki Markup.
This document explains step 2 in some more detail. Most problems with this stage stem from difficulty in
determining the correct amount of whitespace to put between two pieces of markup.
DefaultConfluenceWysiwygConverter
Converts Wiki Markup to HTML to be given to the rich text editor, and converts edited HTML back
to markup. Creates RenderContexts from pages and delegates the conversion operations to a
WysiwygConverter instance.
DefaultWysiwygConverter
Converts Wiki Markup to XHTML to be given to the rich text editor, and converts edited XHTML back to
markup. This class contains the guts of the HTML -> Markup conversion, and delegates the Markup -
> HTML conversion to a WikiStyleRenderer, with the setRenderingForWysiwyg flag set to true in the
RenderContext.
WysiwygNodeConverter
Interface for any class which can convert an HTML DOM tree into Markup. Can be implemented to convert
particular macros back into markup. The macro class must implement WysiwygNodeConverter and give
the macro's outer DIV a 'wysiwyg' attribute with the value 'macro:<macroname>'.
Styles
Aggregates text styles as we traverse the HTML DOM tree. Immutable. Responsible for interpreting Node
attributes as styles and decorating markup text with style and colour macros/markup.
ListContext
Keeps track of nested lists – the depth and the type.
WysiwygLinkHelper
Just a place to put some static methods for creating HTML attributes describing links, and for converting
link HTML nodes into markup.
String convertNode(
Node node,
Node previousSibling,
Styles styles,
ListContext listContext,
boolean inTable,
boolean inListItem,
boolean ignoreText,
boolean escapeWikiMarkup)
That is, the method returns the markup needed to represent the HTML contained in the DOM tree, based
on the current context (what styles have been applied by parent nodes, are we already in a table or a list
and so on).
The body of this method is a large case statement based on the type of the current node and the current
state. The typical case gets the markup produced by its children, using the convertChildren method,
decorates it in some way and returns the resulting string.
The convertChildren method simply iterates over a node's children calling convertNode and
concatenating the markup returned.
In order to determine how much white space separates the markup produced by two sibling nodes we
often need to know the type of each node. That is why convertNode takes a previousSibling argument.
The getSep method takes the two nodes to be separated and some state information. t uses a lookup
table to decide what type of whitespace (or other text) to use.
1. Some errors should be rendered differently so that the original markup isn't lost – e.g. an embedded
image which can't be found should be displayed as a placeholder, not just an error message.
2. When links are rendered the original link text is put in an attribute on the tag so that it can be
recovered.
3. Some errors put the erroneous markup in a span with the "wikisrc" class, which causes its contents
to be directly used as markup.
4. This speaks for itself:
// @HACK
// The newline before the title parameter below fixes CONF-4562. I have absolutely no idea HOW
it fixes
// CONF-4562, but the simple fact that it does fix the problem indicates that I could spend my
whole life
// trying to work out why and be none the wiser. I suggest you don't think too hard about it
either, and
// instead contemplate the many joys that can be found in life -- the sunlight reflecting off
Sydney
// Harbour; walking through the Blue Mountains on a dew-laden Autumn morning; the love of a
beautiful
// woman -- this should in some way distract you from the insane ugliness of the code I am
about to check
// in.
//
// Oh, and whatever you do, don't remove the damn newline.
//
// -- Charles, November 09, 2005
if (renderContext.isRenderingForWysiwyg())
buffer.append("\n");
5. Thin spaces are added at strategic points so that there is somewhere to place the cursor when
inserting text, e.g. at the end of the page, in a new paragraph.
6. Curly brackets are treated differently: a '{' typed in the RTE is interpreted as the start of a macro
tag, not as an escaped '{' – you must explicitly escape '{ and '}' in the RTE.
7. Macros.
From a wysiwyg point of view there are four cases:
a. Macros with unrendered bodies (or no bodies). These appear as {macro} ... unrendered
body ... {macro}, so the user can edit the body text in wysiwyg mode.
b. Macros with rendered bodies, but which the editor doesn't 'understand' – that is, the editor
can't manipulate the HTML produced by the macro. These are rendered as {macro} ...
rendered body ... {macro}. A macro indicates that the editor doesn't understand it by
returning true from suppressMacroRenderingDuringWysiwyg(). Most macros should do this,
unless the Wysiwyg converter understands how to create a new instance of the macro. The
user can edit the HTML in the body of these macros, which will be converted back to markup.
c. Macros we fully understand. These are simply rendered as normal (but surrounded by a div or
span describing them). These return false from suppressMacroRenderingDuringWysiwyg().
d. Macros which are responsible for their own rendering. These return true from
suppressSurroundingTagDuringWysiwygRendering()
8. The bq. markup adds an attribute to the tag to distinguish it from a blockquote tag produced by the
{quote} macro.
9. The header DIV of panel macros is given a wysiwyg="ignore" attribute, because it is generated from
the macro parameters. This means that is you edit the title of a panel macro in the RTE the change
is ignored.
10. Look at the InlineHtmlMacro for an example of a macro which implements WysiwygNodeConverter.
There are two types of test – markup tests and XHTML tests.
Use a markup test when you have a piece of markup which doesn't 'round trip' correctly. For instance,
perhaps the markup:
* foo
* bar
becomes
* foo
* bar
when you go from wiki markup mode to rich text mode and back again.
The body of the test you write would be:
which will check that the markup is the same after a round trip. Note that it is OK for markup to change
in some circumstances – two different markup strings may be equivalent, and the round trip will convert
the starting markup to 'canonical markup' which renders identically to the initial markup. There are also
pathological cases where a round trip may switch markup between two equivalent strings – these should
be fixed, even though they don't break the rendering as they show up as changes in the version history.
If a bug is caused by the conversion of user-edited (or pasted) HTML into markup.
In this case you write a test like this:
This test first checks that the desired markup round-trips correctly, then that the HTML converts to that
markup.
Finding Problems
Once you have written your test you need to find out what the converter is doing.
Running the test in debug mode and putting breakpoints in testMarkup/testXHTML is the best way
of doing this. As you track down the nodes causing problems you can put breakpoints in the part of
convertNode which handles the offending type of node.
You can also set 'debug' to true in DefaultWysiwygConverter.java:44 – this will dump the XHTML
produced by Neko, turn off the post-processing mentioned above, and print out details of the separator
calculations in the generated markup string.
[li-li
false,false]
Introduction
This document describes how the default security system in Confluence works, using the Seraph library
for HTTP authentication.
Extending the security system by subclassing Seraph's authenticator and configuring the seraph-
config.xml file is outside the scope of this document. See Single Sign-on Integration with JIRA and
Confluence.
Flowchart diagrams
The easiest way to understand Confluence's authentication process is with the following diagrams.
Authentication flowchart
The default Seraph authenticator supports four methods of authentication, as can be seen in the
flowchart:
Each method is tried in the order above. A successful login at an earlier method continues without
checking the later methods. Failure at one method means continuing with the later methods until all
Looking through the source code will show that Seraph supports role-based authentication, but this is
only used in Confluence for the /admin/ URL restriction.
Related pages
There are three main persistence APIs which are used in Confluence:
Because Bandana is the primary persistence API used by plugin developers, it will be covered in more
detail below.
Hibernate
Confluence uses the open source persistence framework Hibernate. Confluence 2.2.x uses Hibernate
version 2.1.8.
Each object to be persisted has a *.hbm.xml file which sits in the same directory as the associated class
in the Confluence web application. For example, Label.class has an associated Label.hbm.xml which
describes how label objects will be persisted. The particular details vary from class to class, but typically
include:
• the database table used to hold the data (Confluence bootstrap creates these tables if they do not
exist)
• the column names and mappings to class attributes
• any special queries used for functionality in Confluence (for example, to retrieve a list of personal
labels)
All this data is expressed in the standard Hibernate mapping format. In some cases, there is a single
mapping file for all subclasses of a particular class. For example, ContentEntityObject.hbm.xml includes
mappings for pages, news, mail and space descriptions.
Although it might be possible to extend Confluence's database through Hibernate, this is not
recommended. There are a few downfalls with extending our Hibernate configuration:
1. You need to maintain your forked copy of the hibernate mappings file against each new version of
Confluence
2. Your new hibernate objects will not be protected from (or necessarily upgraded to) any changes we
make in the schema in future versions
3. Unless you really understand our code, something weird will happen.
Avoid using Confluence's database to store custom data – use content properties or Bandana instead.
Bandana
Bandana is an Atlassian framework for persistence which uses XStream to convert arbitrary Java objects
into XML for storage. The concepts used in Bandana are very simple:
• Bandana stores data in contexts. In Confluence, there is one global context, and one context per
space. The relevant class is ConfluenceBandanaContext.
• Each context stores key-value pairs. The key is a String and the value can be any Object (it should
typically implement Serializable).
If you are defining your own type within a plugin, please provide a no argument constructor to
avoid class loading issues
Based on this design, the BandanaManager has methods for storing and retrieving values from a context
by key:
• void setValue(BandanaContext context, String key, Object value) - store a value against a
key in the Bandana context.
For plugins, it is recommended to use a key for your Bandana values that includes the
full package name of your plugin. For example, a theme plugin might use a key like
org.acme.confluence.mytheme.importantPreference.
Prior to Confluence 2.3, this XML was written to the filesystem in the Confluence home directory.
The file config/confluence-global.bandana.xml stores the global context, and there is a file
config/spaceKey/confluence-space.bandana.xml with the configuration for each space. In Confluence
2.3 and above, Bandana data is written to the BANDANA table in the database, with three columns for
context, key and an XML-serialized value.
To get access to the BandanaManager from your plugin code, normally you only need to include a private
BandanaManager field with an associated setter method. Spring will automatically call the setter method
before the first time your plugin is called.
Content properties
Another form of persistence, content properties are key-value pairs associated with a ContentEntityObject
and stored in the database.
The Spring Framework provides an inversion of control (IoC) container that Confluence uses for managing
objects at runtime. This document provides an overview of how this relates to Confluence, specifically
focused at the needs of plugin developers and those extending Confluence.
If you're looking for the quick overview on how to access Confluence managers from your plugin, check
out Accessing Confluence Components From Plugin Modules.
The purpose of an IoC container is to manage dependencies between objects. When you go to use an
object in Confluence it will have all its dependencies ready and available to use. For example, calling a
method on a PageManager will typically require a PageDao to work correctly. Spring ensures that these
dependencies are available when they are needed, with a little bit of guidance from us.
Spring contexts
Confluence uses a number of Spring contexts to separate our objects into discrete subsystems. The
contexts are declared as servlet context parameters in confluence/WEB-INF/web.xml. The snippet below
shows the Spring contexts listed in web.xml for Confluence 2.3:
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
classpath:/applicationContext.xml,
classpath:/securityContext.xml,
classpath:/databaseSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/indexingSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/eventSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/rpcSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/upgradeSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/wikiSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/wikiFiltersSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/importExportSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/schedulingSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/pluginSubsystemContext.xml,
classpath:/atlassianUserContext.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>
What this means is there are 13 context XML files in the Confluence classpath which specify the
objects in Confluence which are managed by Spring. When I say 'in the Confluence classpath', in
practice I mean they live in confluence/WEB-INF/classes/. The biggest and most important is
applicationContext.xml, which we'll have a look at now.
Bean declarations
Around line 100 in the Confluence 2.3 applicationContext.xml, you'll find the schemaHelper bean as a
good example:
The bean has an ID for Spring to reference it ('schemaHelper'), a class name which will be used to
automatically create the bean ('bucket.core.persistence.hibernate.schema.SchemaHelper'), and a
Because we use the setter injection method in Confluence, this declaration means two things about the
SchemaHelper Java class:
Other than these two requirements, the SchemaHelper class can be any normal Java class. It can have
other constructors, other public methods, and can implement or extend any interface or class that you
like.
1. When you access the SchemaHelper bean through Spring, it will have its mappingResources and
hibernateConfig dependencies injected before you use it.
2. You use the bean as a dependency elsewhere, to automatically get it injected into your own class
(more on this below).
Only Confluence beans are registered in Spring via an XML context. Spring Component Plugins are
registered at runtime when the plugin is enabled. Other plugin classes such as actions are autowired
without registration with Spring.
Autowiring
In the bean declaration for schemaHelper bean above, each property has the same name as the
Spring bean which is used to satisfy it. For example, the 'mappingResources' property uses the
mappingResources bean, which is set by the setMappingResources() method on the schemaHelper.
Spring provides a shortcut for leaving these declarations out, called autowiring.
For example, the declaration for themeManager bean is marked as autowire 'byName' (near line 1000):
Spring looks at the names of the four methods, tries to find beans with IDs of 'bandanaManager',
'eventManager', 'globalTheme', and 'pluginManager'. If they exist, it calls the setter method with the
relevant bean as an argument.
In this case, methods 1, 2 and 4 will be called by Spring to inject dependencies. Method 3
(setGlobalTheme) is just a setter used for something else, not called by Spring. This is the drawback of
autowiring: it is slow and can waste time trying to find dependencies uselessly.
Using autowiring reduces the need for writing a lot of XML, and also provides a method of dependency
injection for objects which aren't registered in the Spring context XML files like plugin modules.
Almost all Confluence plugin types are autowired. What this means, is if your macro plugin needs to
access a Confluence page, it can simply do so like this:
// ...
}
/**
* Called by Spring to inject pageManager
*/
public void setPageManager(PageManager pageManager)
{
this.pageManager = pageManager;
}
}
Autowired components must use the interfaces used by the manager to work with different versions of
Confluence. The implementing class used for various managers may change over time, but the bean ID
and interface will be preserved.
Internally, the way the components are autowired is via Confluence's ContainerManager. You can also do
this with your own objects if required:
ContainerManager.autowireComponent(object);
If you need access to Confluence managers or other Spring beans without autowiring your class, you can
use the ContainerManager directly. For example, to get the pageManager bean:
You should always use autowiring in preference to this method because it makes your code easier
to change and easier to test. Inside Confluence this method is sometimes required to break circular
dependencies.
Confluence uses Spring's transaction handling by wrapping some objects in transaction proxy beans.
Introduction
A new feature in Confluence 2.3 is the ability to configure and run multiple copies of Confluence in a
cluster, so that clients can connect to any copy and see the same information. While we have tried to
make clustering Confluence as easy and administrator-friendly as possible, it is a major architectural
change and requires extra planning for deployment and upgrades.
This document will give a technical overview of clustering in Confluence 2.3, primarily for those users and
developers who will be installing and configuring Confluence in a cluster. A separate overview is available
for Confluence plugin developers.
Cluster topology
A simple description of the cluster topology for Confluence would be multiple applications, shared data
source. A cluster of Confluence consists of:
• a distributed Tangosol Coherence cache, which all nodes use via a multicast group (see networking
summary below)
• a single database, which all nodes connect to
The user is responsible for configuring an appropriate HTTP load balancer in front of the clustered
installations. Typically this means using mod_jk or another application server load-balancing technology.
The load balancer must be configured to support session affinity.
Atlassian only supports clustering over a local area network. While it is theoretically possible to configure
Massive to cluster across a WAN, the latency involved is likely to kill performance of the cluster. We can't
stop you trying, of course, but you're going to have to work out how to configure Coherence yourself, and
we're not going to support the resulting mess.
All the Confluence installations must be running exactly the same application, down to the lowest level.
Items that must be the same include:
• Confluence version
• Application server version
• JDK version
• Libraries and plugins in the Confluence classpath, WEB-INF/lib
• Libraries in the application server classpath
The installation section has more information how to ensure homogenous node installations.
When installing Confluence in a clustered setup, you will be responsible for configuring your web server
and load balancer to distribute traffic between each node. No additional software is required as Coherence
is bundled with Confluence.
Copying the Confluence application and home directory helps ensure that the installations are
homogenous.
An alternative to this method is to copy the Confluence web application, but not the Confluence home
directory. In this case, the installation wizard will require your cluster name to connect to the other
nodes, and it will automatically configure itself. You will need to rebuild the index manually after this
installation, however.
Upgrade process
Another consequence of the homogenous requirement is that upgrades must be done by following a strict
process.
The Confluence database in a cluster is shared by all nodes. This means that the database must be
able to scale to service all the Confluence nodes, which will probably mean implementing some kind of
database cluster and JDBC-level load balancing. We can not offer support with scaling or tuning your
database, you will need to talk to your DBA or database vendor.
For obvious reasons, you must have an external database to run Massive - you can not cluster Confluence
when using the embedded HSQL database.
The most important requirement for the cluster database is that it have sufficient connections available
to support the expected number of application nodes. For example, if each Confluence instance has a
connection pool of 20 connections and you expect to run a cluster with four nodes, your database server
must allow at least 80 connections to the Confluence database. In practice, you may require more than
the minimum for debugging or administrative purposes.
In a cluster, attachments must be stored in the database. Configuring a cluster in an existing installation
will automatically migrate your attachments to the database. Non-clustered installations still have the
option of using the Confluence home directory for storing attachments.
While attachments are stored in the database, they are temporarily written to the cluster node's local
filesystem, designated <confluence-home>/temp folder, when being streamed to users (so Confluence
doesn't have to hold open database connections unnecessarily). For this reason, Confluence will still need
enough temporary disk space to hold any attachments currently in transit.
Distributed cache
In a normal configuration, Confluence uses many caches to reduce the number of database queries
required for common operations. Viewing a page might require dozens of permissions checks, and
it would be very slow if Confluence queried the database for this information with every page view.
However, caches must be carefully maintained so they are consistent with the application data. If the
page permissions change, the old invalid data needs to be removed from the cache so it can be replaced
with a fresh correct copy.
To preserve consistent caches across a cluster, Confluence uses a distributed cache called Tangosol
Coherence, which manages replicating cache updates transparently across all nodes. The network
requirements of the distributed cache are quite simple, but must be preserved if the cluster is to work
properly.
To discover other nodes in the cluster, Confluence broadcasts a join request on a multicast network
address. Confluence must be able to open a UDP port on this multicast address, or it will not be able to
find the other cluster nodes.
Once the nodes are discovered, each responds with a unicast (normal) IP address and port where it can
be contacted for cache updates. Confluence must be able to open a UDP port for regular communication
with the other nodes.
Because the Coherence network requirements are different to those required by the Confluence database
connection, the situation can arise where Confluence can use the database but not talk to the other nodes
in the cluster via Coherence. When Confluence detects this, it will shut itself down in a cluster panic.
For more details on the network configuration of the distributed cache, see the networking summary
Home directory
Confluence's home directory has a much-reduced role in a cluster. Because the application data must be
shared between all nodes for consistency, the only information stored in the Confluence home directory is
either node-specific, or needed to start Confluence. This includes information related to:
• database connection
• license
• cluster connection
The only application data stored in the Confluence home directory is the Lucene search index. Confluence
synchronises this data itself by keeping track of indexing tasks in the database.
Event handling
Broadcasting events to all nodes in a cluster is supported in Confluence, but not recommended. The
cluster topology uses a shared data store so that application state does not need to be synchronised by
events.
The event broadcasting is done only for certain events, like installing a plugin. When a plugin is installed
in one node, Confluence puts the plugin data in the database, and notifies the other nodes that they need
to load the plugin into memory.
Indexing
Confluence maintains a copy of its Lucene search index on each node of the cluster. This index is used for
many things beside full-text searches, including RSS feeds and lists of recently updated content. If a node
is disconnected from the cluster for a short amount of time (less than three hours), it will be able to bring
its copy of the index up-to-date when it rejoins the cluster. If the node is down for longer than that, it will
be forced to completely rebuild its search index from scratch.
If a node is down for a long amount of time and its lucene index has become stale as a result, you may
want to avoid the expensive operation of rebuilding the index. To do that, you must copy a "live" version
of the Lucene index from an active node. Simply replace the contents of the Confluence Home]/index
directory with those from an active node before bringing the stale node back up.
Job synchronisation
For tasks such as sending the daily report emails, it is important that only one node in the cluster does
this. Otherwise you would get multiple emails from Confluence every day.
Confluence uses locks in the Coherence distributed cache to ensure only one node can be running certain
jobs at a time. This ensures email notifications will only be sent once.
Activity tracking
Activity tracking does not work in a cluster, and will be disabled for clustered deployments. We're
working on making the activity tracker clusterable in a future release. You can follow this issue in JIRA:
CONF-7520
Cluster panic
In some situations, there can be a network issue or firewall that prevents the distributed cache from
communicating but still allows Confluence to update the database. This is a dangerous situation because
when the caches on the detached nodes become inconsistent, users on different nodes will see different
information and updates can be lost.
Confluence can detect this problem by checking a database value against a cached value, and if they
differ, all the clustered nodes will be shut down with a 'Cluster panic' message. This is considered a fatal
error because the consequences can cause damage to your data. For those administrators that like to
live on the edge, there is a system property to prevent cluster panic and allow data corruption. For more
information, see Cluster safety mechanism.
If a cluster panic does occur, you need to ensure proper network connectivity between the clustered
nodes. Most likely multicast traffic is being blocked or not routed correctly. See the networking summary
below.
In addition to normal connectivity with its database, all clustered Confluence instances require access to a
multicast group and the ability to open a UDP unicast port.
By default, the multicast address is automatically generated from the cluster name you provide when
starting the cluster and the multicast port is fixed. During cluster setup, Confluence will prompt for the
For any settings which are not configurable through the Confluence web interface, they can be configured
via an XML file in the Confluence home directory for more exotic networking requirements.
Since the maximum addressable memory on a 32 bit JVM is 4GB, some large servers may scale Java
applications by running JVM instances concurrently. This would be implemented as separate, clustered
Confluence nodes running on a single server and communicating internally. Because each JVM replicates
the cache entirely, it may be useful to test a single, massive instance running a 64 bit JVM as an
alternative. This configuration may result in superior performance than an internal cluster.
Co-locating nodes is inadvisable as high latency may unacceptably degrade cache replication. Cluster
nodes will provide the best performance if servers are physically adjacent. However, as long as all nodes
share a LAN, users may wish to test alternative configurations to see how performance is affected.
Related Pages
Introduction
A mechanism was added in Confluence 2.3 and above to ensure database consistency when running
multiple cluster nodes against the same database. This is called the cluster safety mechanism, and is
designed to ensure that your wiki cannot become inconsistent because updates by one user are not
visible to another. A failure of this mechanism is a fatal error in Confluence and is called cluster panic.
Because the cluster safety mechanism helps prevents data inconsistency whenever any two copies of
Confluence running against the same database, it is enabled in all instances of Confluence, not just
clusters.
A scheduled task, ClusterSafetyJob, runs every 30 seconds in Confluence. In a cluster, this job is run
only on one of the nodes. The scheduled task operates on a safety number – a randomly generated
number that is stored both in the database and in the distributed cache used across a cluster. It does the
following:
How to fix it
If cluster panic occurs, two or more instances of Confluence were updating the same database without
being in the same cluster. Possible reasons (with associated solutions) for this are:
• (most common) Two instances of Confluence have been started in your application server.
° Solution: Check your application server configuration to make sure that two copies don't start
up.
• Two copies of your application server are running. Sometimes starting an application server twice
will result in two processes running, even though only one can be accessed over the network.
° Solution: Check a list of running processes (for example, with ps) and make sure your
In all cases, when starting Confluence after a cluster panic, you must ensure all cluster nodes have
been shut down completely. If necessary, use tools like ps and kill to get a list of Java processes and
terminate them manually.
Technical details
The cluster safety number in the database is stored in the CLUSTERSAFETY table. This table has just one
row: the current safety number.
Velocity is a server-side template language used by Confluence to render page content. Velocity allows
Java objects to be called alongside standard HTML. Users who are writing User Macros, plugins or
customised PDF exports may need to modify Velocity content. General information is available from the
Velocity user guide.
Useful Resources
Example Usage
$foo
To set a variable:
A basic if statement:
A velocity variable which evaluates to null will simply render as the variable name. See the Velocity
User's Guide
Related Content
With the release of Confluence 2.6.0, many files have been moved inside the main .jar file, which means
they can no longer be edited by simply opening and saving a file.
For those not familiar with the terminology, a .jar file is a Java ARchive file. It's like a Unix .tar file, and
is managed by a very similar command-line tool jar which is included with the JDK. Essentially, it takes
several files, or an entire directory structure, and compresses them together into a single file. This saves
a little space, and makes it much easier to manage that group of files as a single unit. The terms "file"
and "archive" can be used interchangeably in this context, as they refer to the same collection of bytes.
To edit a file that exists inside a .jar file, you need to unpack the archive, perform the desired edits, then
re-pack the archive. To do this on Unix/Linux, follow these steps:
These instructions assume a Unix environment, but they also apply to Windows for the most part. If
you're working at the command-line, the only real change will be substituting dir for cd.
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
Because Confluence doesn't have an official API yet, you should assume that any change you make to
manager interfaces, model objects, services, or really any commonly used code will in some way impact
third-party plugin developers. As such, we should always be careful to deprecate, rather than remove old
functionality.
Deprecation
All deprecated methods in Confluence MUST include, as the first thing after the @deprecated tag,
the text "since n", where n is the version number at which the tag was added, followed by either a
short explanation of why the method should not be used, or a direction to use a different method.
Rationale
Because we want to keep third-party developers happy, we should deprecate methods that may be used
by plugins instead of just deleting them. However, deprecated methods pollute the namespace, and
keeping them around indefinitely just encourages people to continue to use them.
Therefore, we should record when a method has been deprecated, and before each major release we
should remove anything that has stayed deprecated for more than six months or two major versions
(whichever is longer).
Examples
For a simple redirect, the deprecation tag is the only Javadoc the method should require. Developers
should consult the doc for the linked alternative to find out more about what the method is likely to do:
For a "this is no longer the right way to do things" deprecation, a longer explanation may be required,
and the old Javadoc may need to be retained for developers who are still stuck doing things the old way
for some reason. A short explanation is put in the deprecated tag itself, and the detail is put in the main
body of the Javadoc:
/**
* Return all the content a user has authored in this space.
*
* <b>Warning:</b> This method has been deprecated since Confluence 2.1 because it is
* insanely inefficient to do in the database. You should migrate your code to use the
* SmartListManager instead, which will get the results from Lucene.
*
* @deprecated since 2.1 use the {@link SmartListManager} for complex queries
*/
List getContentInSpaceAuthoredBy(String spaceKey, String username);
• The underlying model has changed, rendering any client of the old code obselete. For example if you
move from Permission getPermission() to List getPermissions(), the former method would
return dangerously incorrect information if it were maintained, and thus should be deleted.
• There would be significant effort required to maintain parallel, deprecated way of doing things for six
months
• You would be forced to write an ugly API because all the "right" method/class names are taken up
with deprecated methods (assume the new way of doing things will stick around forever)
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
1. Don't catch Exception unless that's all you're having thrown to you.
2. Don't declare that you throw Exception ever.
3. Both rules #1 and #2 apply to RuntimeException as well.
4. Don't catch Throwable if you want to continue breathing.
5. Rule #4 applies to Error and any subclasses of Error as well.
6. Don't catch, log and rethrow.
7. Familiarise yourself with the standard RuntimeException subclasses (IllegalStateException,
IllegalArgumentException, UnsupportedOperationException, IndexOutOfBoundsException), and use
them in preference to creating your own runtime exception class.
• For example, if the problem is that an object reference (or "pointer") which you didn't expect
to be null is in fact null, why not throw a NullPointerException?
8. If you explicity throw any RuntimeException in a method, document it in the method's @throws
Javadoc like you would a checked exception.
Meaningful exceptions
Where possible create, document and throw meaningful unchecked exceptions. For example, write this:
In preference to this:
The latter implementation is not as good because it gives the calling code very little discretion as to what
kind of exceptions it wants to handle.
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
Transaction Management
The last point is necessary because in some cases, we were sending redirect responses to the browser
then committing the transaction. A quick browser would request the redirect page before their transaction
was committed, and view stale data as a result. By committing the transaction before we render the view,
we make sure that everything we expect to be in the database is in the database before the browser has
a chance to re-request it.
Hibernate Sessions
Sessions are a Hibernate construct used to mediate connections with the database.
The session opens a single database connection when it is created, and holds onto it until the session
is closed. Every object that is loaded by Hibernate from the database is associated with the session,
allowing Hibernate to automatically persist objects that are modified, and allowing Hibernate to
implement functionality such as lazy-loading.
Disconnected Objects
If an object is evicted from its session (for example via a clear, see below), or the session is closed while
the object is still kept alive, the object is "disconnected" from the session. A disconnected object will
continue to work so long as you don't perform any operation that it needs to go back to the database for,
such as accessing a lazily-loaded collection.
If you see a LazyInitializationException, it means that a Hibernate-managed object has lived longer than
its session.
Managed objects are not portable between sessions. Trying to load an object in one session then save it
into another session will also result in an error. (You can use Session.load() or Session.get() to re-
introduce an object to a new session, but you're much better off fixing whatever problem is causing you
to try to move objects between sessions in the first place.
Caching
Storing hibernate objects in caches is a bad idea. By definition, a hibernate-managed object placed in
a cache will outlive its session. Even if caching such an object is safe now, it's quite likely that in the
future we might switch some of its properties to be lazily-loaded, or change code-paths so that properties
that were previously being loaded before the object was cached aren't being loaded any more. The
LazyInitializationException errors that result rarely show up in tests, and are hard to diagnose and
fix.
Hibernate maintains its own second-level cache (shared between Confluence nodes via Tangosol
Coherence) that does not suffer from this problem. Use it in preference to manually caching Hibernate
data.
If you need to cache information from Hibernate, don't cache the Hibernate objects themselves. A
useful alternative is to cache the object's ID and class, and then retrieve the object in the context of
the current session using Session.get(class, id). ID lookups go straight through Hibernate's own
second-level cache, so are (hopefully) efficient. The getHandle() and findByHandle() methods of the
AnyTypeObjectDao provide a helpful API for doing just this.
When the session persists its changes to the database, this is called "flushing". During a flush, each
object associated with the session is checked to see if it has changed state. Any object with changed
state will be persisted to the database, regardless of whether the changed objects are explicitly saved
or not. You can configure Hibernate's flush behaviour, but the default (FlushMode.AUTO) will flush the
session:
How long a flush takes is a function of the number of objects associated with the session. Thus, the
more objects you load during the lifetime of a session, the less efficient each query will be (as a flush will
generally be done prior to each query). If you have some long-running operation that gets slower and
slower and slower as it runs, it's possible that the Hibernate session is the cause.
Operations that cycle through large numbers of objects may want to periodically clear() their session.
Clearing will dissociate all objects from the session, so they won't build up making flushes slower and
slower. Clearing a session does not flush it first, so you'll want to flush manually or you will lose any
pending, unsaved changes.
Multi-threading
Hibernate sessions are not thread-safe. Not only does this mean you shouldn't pass a Hibernate session
into a new thread, it also means that because objects you load from a session can be called from (and
call back to) their owning session, you must not share Hibernate-managed objects between threads.
Once again, try to only pass object IDs, and load the object freshly from the new thread's own session.
Spring's transaction management places the Hibernate session in a ThreadLocal variable, accessed via
the sessionFactory. All Confluence DAOs use that ThreadLocal. This means that when you create a new
thread you no longer have access to the Hibernate session for that thread (a good thing, as above), and
you are no longer part of your current transaction.
Confluence uses the "Session in view" pattern for managing Hibernate sessions. The
SessionInViewFilter opens a Hibernate session which is then available for the entire web request. The
advantages of this is that you avoid session-related errors:
• Each request monopolises a database connection from the moment a request comes in, to the last
byte sent to the client
• Each session will end up associated with every object that is loaded for the duration of the request
• Developers are often caught out by the way sessions behave when threads haven't come in through
the web tier (i.e. Quartz jobs)
Non-Web Requests
Non-web requests do not automatically have a Hibernate session to work with, because they don't come
in through the Session In View Filter. This includes start-up events, quartz jobs, and any long-running
task that spawns a new thread. As a result, a new session will be opened when you make a call to a
transaction-managed Spring object, and closed when that call returns.
A very common programming error in this context is to retrieve a collection of objects from a manager,
then do something to each object. The moment the call to the manager returns, all objects will be
detached from their containing session. If you try to do anything to them after that, you won't get the
result you expected. I'm not sure if this sequence diagram helps, but here goes...
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
The Disclaimer
This document represents the ideal arrangement of components in Confluence. This architecture should
be the target of our refactoring, and should inform any new features we add to the system.
The Goals
For the first three years of its development, little attention was paid to the high-level structure of the
Confluence application. As such, it grew organically and developed interesting quirks on the way. This
document tries to make sense of Confluence from a high level, to make the application easier to work
with, easier to explain and easier to extend.
The Metaphor
• At the lowest level you have the bootstrap code, which is required for going from a state of having
nothing, to one where the rest of the system can be loaded.
• At the next level, the operating system provides device drivers, network abstractions and the like,
generic services that any application can use.
• On top of those services you might run an application
Bootstrap
The Confluence Bootstrap Process is responsible for bringing up enough of Confluence that the rest of the
system can be loaded. In Confluence's case, this involves:
Based on this information, the bootstrap process can determine what to do next, and provide enough
configuration for the core services that they know how to start up.
Setup (a digression)
Confluence's in-browser setup requires a number of components that aren't used anywhere else. For
example it needs a dummy plugin manager so that i18n works before we have a real plugin manager
available. Ideally, setup should be a separate Spring context that is loaded when setup is required, and
disposed of when setup is complete.
Currently this is not the case - setup components are loaded as part of the bootstrap context and remain
indefinitely. To fix this will need some work on the atlassian-setup component, which annoyingly
conflates setup and bootstrap.
Once the system has been bootstrapped, and setup has (at least) reached the point where we know how
to connect to the database, the main spring context is loaded as a child of the bootstrap context. The
main Spring context, available as a static singleton from ContainerManager, contains the remainder of
Confluence's Spring configuration, loaded from a lot of different XML files in WEB-INF/classes.
The list of XML files to load for the main Spring context is defined in the contextConfigLocation
parameter in web.xml.
Loading these files in some specific order (as parent/child contexts) might make sense as a way of
enforcing component boundaries, but I'm not convinced the benefit is worth the effort.
Services
These are generic services that you might consider useful to any application, like database access,
caching, plugins, events, indexing/searching, and so on. A good way to think of the service layer is to
imagine a theoretical library called "atlassian-base", consisting only of Confluence's bootstrap and service
layers, which could be used as the basis for any new Atlassian web application.
Services can have dependencies on the bootstrap manager, and on each other, but there should never
be a circular dependency between services, and there should never be a tightly coupled dependency
between a service and application code.
In the future, once the service system has been bedded down, we might introduce some kind of naming
convention for private beans to make it harder to use them accidentally outside the context.
Confluence Services
Subsystems
Below the service layer is the Confluence application itself, which is divided into subsystems. More on this
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
New Standard
Much of the Confluence codebase does not yet conform to this standard. Confluence developers
should help the Confluence codebase out by bringing any code they touch into line with this
standard
Read Me First
You really, really should read the Sun guide to writing Doc comments: http://java.sun.com/j2se/javadoc/
writingdoccomments/, especially the advice about avoiding phrases like "This class.." or "This method..."
The Rules
interesting behaviour beyond what is already documented for the overridden method
° Trivial getters or setters
A trivial corollary to the above rule: all methods declared in an interface must have doc comments.
• Any side-effects of the method should be clear from the doc comment
• @param tags for each parameter, even if the content is trivial
• @returns tag for the return value, even if trivial
• What type of object will be contained in any returned collection
• What happens if any of the arguments supplied to the method are null (saying "Should never be
null" in a {{@param}}is sufficient if the behaviour is undefined, but probably bad)
• Whether the method ever returns null, or if not, what it returns if there is no value
• @throws tags for all declared exceptions, describing the circumstances they are thrown
• @throws tags for any likely undeclared exceptions
• a @since tag for any interface, or interface method
• @see tags for other classes or methods that interact with the thing being documented in interesting
ways, or for other ways to get the same information
Tip
If you say something in the doc comment, you should have a test that proves it's true.
Things to avoid
...would be nice, but every time I've attempted to add them, I've come up against how badly our
packages are structured. I'd say not to bother right now.
Deprecation
So we don't keep stale methods around forever, we should always document when a method was
deprecated. For example:
For more information on commenting deprecated methods, see the Deprecation Guidelines
• The user (server administrator) wants to know if their server is running correctly
• Atlassian support wants evidence of possible problems
• Developers want to be able to trace code execution without attaching a debugger
When you write any code in Confluence, you should ask yourself what you would want to see, from the
point of view of the above three people. If you were running a server, what would you want to be notified
of? If you were handling a support case regarding some problem with the system, what information
would you need? If you were tracing a bug in the code, what would you want to see logged?
Loggers
The current practice in Confluence is to create a static final logger called log (lower-case) in each
class that needs to perform logging. This may need to be addressed in the future. You will find some
old code still uses Category.getInstance() instead of Logger.getLogger(). Category is deprecated in
newer versions of log4j, and should be phased out as you find it.
Log Levels
The standard Confluence log (level WARN) is a way for Confluence to communicate with the server
administrator. Anything we log to this file will worry the administrator in some way. Logging at WARN
level and higher should be reserved for situations that require some kind of attention from the server
administrator, and for which corrective action is possible.
We should assume that any time Confluence logs a WARN level message or higher, the customer
will create a support case, and will expect us to provide a solution that prevents that message from
happening again.
Context
You can rarely put too much context in a log message. Don't just say an operation failed. Say what
operation you were attempting when it failed, what object you were trying to act on, and why. Remember
to log the exception, so a stack-trace can be logged.
Better:
Even better (assuming this information is available and relevant in the context. I am making this one up):
The log4j MDC allows you to add contextual information to a ThreadLocal, which is then included with
subsequent log messages. This is a useful tool when you need to add the same contextual information to
a lot of log messages.
For example, we currently use the MDC in the LoggingContextFilter to add the request URL and
current user to the logging context for every web request.
Example usage:
while (objectsToIndex.hasNext())
{
Searchable obj = (Searchable) objectsToIndex.next();
try
{
MDC.put("Indexing", obj.toString());
index(obj);
}
finally
{
MDC.remove("Indexing");
}
Logging Risks
Logging has the potential to introduce Heisenbugs into your code, because the act of turning logging on
to look for an error changes the code-paths around where the error is occurring. For example, logging
often calls toString() on the objects it wants to log information about. In turn, the toString() method
of an object may have unexpected side-effects, for example causing some lazy-loaded Hibernate property
to be loaded in from the database.
Also, make sure to check that an object can't be null when calling a method on it. Especially when
reporting errors, do go the extra mile to query for null, e.g. like this:
instead of
Logging Performance
Logging progress
It is absolutely vital that some kind of logging is done during a long running task. At least at the start
and at the end of it. Usually, a loop will call a single operation very often. Make sure that - depending
on how long a single call takes - you log each 10th, 100th, 1000th operation. If possible add the
complete number of operations that will have to be performed, e.g. in the form " executing delete user
(2000/5301)"
Confluence trunk development (2.8) will be based on Velocity 1.5. The migration to the latest version of
Velocity brings with it some issues that Confluence developers need to be aware of.
This means that you must quote the first argument to make it a proper string.
For these directives to work correctly with the new syntax a patched version of Webwork 2.1 is also
required. Confluence now depends on this custom version of Webwork 2.1.
#macro (globalLogoBlock)#*
*##if ($settingsManager.getGlobalSettings().isDisableLogo())#* render nothing
*##else#*
*#<a href="$req.contextPath/homepage.action"><img src="#logo("")" align="absmiddle"
border="0"></a>#*
*##end#*
*##end
#macro (globalLogoBlock)
#trim()
#if ($settingsManager.getGlobalSettings().isDisableLogo())
#else
<a href="$req.contextPath/homepage.action"><img src="#logo("")" align="absmiddle"
border="0"></a>
#end
#end
#end
We'll be able to revert to the previous method once VELOCITY-537 is fixed and integrated, although it's
arguable that the new directive makes for more maintainable macros.
It is still a good idea for plugin authors to use the new Velocimacro syntax; updating your templates
can be made easier by looking for the info messages logged by the resource loader whenever it finds
incompatible syntax.
Found incompatible Velocity 1.5 syntax in resource: [resource name]; [template fragment]
These are guidelines related to the development of Confluence. The guidelines mainly apply to
Atlassian employees, but reading them should provide insight for third-party plugin developers as
well, so we decided to make them public.
All new Spring component code should follow these guidelines. If you come across existing code that
doesn't follow them, consider refactoring it to do so.
For an overview of how Spring is used in Confluence, see Spring IoC in Confluence.
General Rules
• For singleton components, prefer constructor-based injection with final fields for dependencies.
• If you have too many components to fit comfortably in a constructor, that's a sign the design is
broken.
• Autowiring should only be used for transient, programatically constructed objects like actions and
plugins. Never autowire anything that's defined in a config file.
• If a component is rarely used (i.e. the upgrade manager), consider giving it prototype scope instead
of singleton.
• Avoid circular dependencies. If you see a circular dependency, ask yourself:
° Can this problem be solved using events?
° Can this problem be solved by having one party register a callback?
Transaction Management
Profiling
Notes
Could we use some kind of funky XML Spring extension so we could declare a bean like this and have the
extension apply the relevant interceptors?
This is a constantly updated FAQ listing questions and answers asked by people developing Confluence
plugins and working with the Confluence code base in general. For general questions, check Confluence
Main FAQ.
If you have a question, please ask it as a comment and someone from Atlassian will reply. Comment
threads will gradually be merged back into this FAQ as needed. Please try to be as specific as
possible with your questions.
Questions
At the moment there is no available option for disabling "Remember My Login on this computer" feature
via the Admin console.
However, there is a feature request available.
As a workaround, one can make modification to the velocity file login.vm. This would require a server
restart nevertheless.
• Stop Confluence
• Go to your confluence install directory
• Locate the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/confluence/login.vm file and make a back up copy
• Open the file. Locate the following code and comment it out.
<!--
<p>
<div class="steplabel" style="width: 150px;"><input type="checkbox" name="os_cookie"
id="os_cookie_id" value="true" tabindex="3"/></div>
<label for="os_cookie_id" accesskey="r">$action.getText("remember.accesskey")</label>
</p>
-->
http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.help.ase_12.5.svrtsg/html/svrtsg/
svrtsg284.htm
Speaking generally, macros will want to do one of three things with their body:
1. Pass the body through wiki->html conversion, then do something to it like stick some more HTML
around it. (i.e. {panel})
2. Do something to the body, then pass it through wiki->html conversion (I don't really have an
example of this)
3. Treat the body as data, not as wiki text. (i.e. {tasklist})
getBodyRenderMode() makes the first case above really easy, because the macro renderer will convert
your body from wiki text to HTML before it's passed to your macro's execute() method. That way your
macro has ready-made HTML delivered to it, and you don't need to do anything.
If you return RenderMode.ALL from getBodyRenderMode(), then the body is rendered the same as a
Confluence page. You can, however, return different values to only have a subset of renderings applied
to your macro body: RenderMode.INLINE, for example, will ignore things like paragraphs, headers or
blockquotes.
So, for example, the {color} macro returns RenderMode.INLINE, since you can only really use {color}
inside a paragraph.
If you are doing macros of type 2 or 3, you'll need to return RenderMode.NO_RENDER, which means the
raw body is passed into your macro with no pre-processing. You can then do whatever you want with it
(including grabbing the SubRenderer component and converting it to wiki text yourself).
Here's the relevant portion of the MacroRendererComponent, which does all the work, if Java code is
more your thing:
if (macro.getBodyRenderMode() == null)
{
buffer.append(macroResult);
}
else if (macro.isInline())
{
buffer.append(context.getRenderedContentStore().addInline(macroResult));
}
else
{
buffer.append(context.addRenderedContent(macroResult));
}
}
catch (MacroException e)
{
log.info("Error formatting macro: " + command + ": " + e, e);
buffer.append(makeMacroError(context, command + ": " + e.getMessage(), body));
}
catch (Throwable t)
This page has been moved to the Administration section, and will be removed from here at some
indeterminate point in the future.
Sometimes, you want to know what is not being used. It's great to know what's getting most attention,
but what about stagnant pages, or even entire spaces that are no longer active?
While viewing space activity and the Global Statistics plugin can provide hints, they still doesn't always
provide enough detail. The simple way is to go directly to the database. We recommend DbVisualizer, and
have basic instructions for connecting it to HSQLDB.
The following query identifies the last date on which content was modified in each space within a single
Confluence instance:
It returns a list of spacenames, and the last date and time at which any content was added or changed.
Alternatively, this one simply identifies spaces whose content hasn't changed since a specified date:
SELECT spaces.spacename
FROM content, spaces
WHERE content.spaceid = spaces.spaceid
GROUP BY spaces.spacename
HAVING MAX(content.lastmoddate) < '2006-10-10';
The Chart plugin can be used in combination with the SQL plugin to give more visually attractive results.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I associate my own properties
with a ContentEntityObject?
You will need the ContentEntityManager (see how to retrieve it). This manager allows you to store and
retrieve arbitrary String values associated with a ContentEntityObject.
Properties are stored as simple key/value pairs. We recommend that anyone writing a third-party plugin
use the standard Java "reverse domain name" syntax to ensure their keys are unique. Keys may be no
longer than 200 characters.
getText and setText can store strings of arbitrary length (up to the size-limit for CLOBs in your
database). There is also a getString and setString which is slightly more efficient, but limited to 255
characters per value.
Most of the time, you don't have to. All plugins will have their 'primary' objects (The macro in a macro
plugin, the XWork actions in an XWork plugin, the RPC handler in an RPC plugin and so on...) autowired.
If you want to write an arbitrary object that is autowired, but that is not any particular plugin type itself,
write a Component Plugin Module. The added advantage of this is that Confluence will then autowire
other plugins with the component you have just written.
If, however, you find you need to autowire an arbitrary object with Spring components, use
bucket.util.ContainerManager
bucket.container.ContainerManager.autowireComponent(myObject);
\etc\java\schedulingSubsystemContext.xml
For example, the expression below will fire at 12pm (noon) every day:
<property name="cronExpression">
<value>0 0 12 * * ?</value>
</property>
Cron expression
You may also like to view an information on how to create Cron expressions to provide the ability to
specify complex time combination.
http://quartz.sourceforge.net/javadoc/org/quartz/CronTrigger.html
To configure Confluence to use Gmail to send emails, you will need to create a JNDI mail session and then
have Confluence use it as per this document.
Please see Setup a mail session in standalone version for some guidelines.
<Resource name="mail/Session"
auth="Container"
type="javax.mail.Session"
mail.smtp.host="smtp.gmail.com"
mail.smtp.port="465"
mail.smtp.auth="true"
mail.smtp.user="nobody@gmail.com"
password="foobar"
mail.smtp.starttls.enable="true"
mail.smtp.socketFactory.class="javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory"
/>
Note: You may optionally add mail.debug=true into the <Resource> to see logs generated by JavaMail.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I convert wiki text to HTML?
In a macro...
The SubRenderer has two render methods: one that allows you to specify a specific RenderMode for the
rendered content, and another that uses the current RenderMode from the RenderContext.
If you just want the body of your macro rendered, you can have this done for you by the macro
subsystem by having your macro's getBodyRenderMode method return the appropriate RenderMode.
The WikiStyleRenderer has a convertWikiToHtml method that takes the wiki text you wish to convert,
and a RenderContext. If you are converting the text in the context of some ContentEntityObject (for
example within a page or blog post), then you can call contentEntityObject.toPageContext() to
retrieve its RenderContext. Otherwise pass in a new PageContext().
Confluence does not have an option to disable RSS feeds from the Administration Console and there is a
discussion regarding this in CONF-10755. However there is a workaround on how to disable RSS via some
simple modifications that this guide will show.
To disable RSS feeds in Confluence, you would need to disable createrssfeed.action and
configurerssfeed.action properties. They are defined in xwork.xml, a configuration file that is zipped
in one of the Confluence dependencies library files.
In this guide, we will be modifying global.vmd and configurerssfeed.vm and place a modified
xwork.xml within your Confluence installation directory. A modified version of each of the file is accessible
from the links below. As ruled at the steps below, you can place them in the corresponding directories
where they belong. However, before applying the patch remember to backup your original files.
• configurerssfeed.vm.
• global.vmd.
• xwork.xml
• Firstly comment out all mention of RSS in the file global.vmd (located in "<confluence-install>/
confluence/decorators/global.vmd"). This will remove the RSS functionalities from Confluence
dashboard.
• Create "<confluence-install>/confluence/WEB-INF/classes/xwork.xml" and modify
createrssfeed.action and configurerssfeed.action to point to an error page (defined in a
velocity file) instead of creating or configuring RSS.
• The error page should contain explanation why RSS is disabled. Please find the modified
"<confluence-install>/confluence/dashboard/configurerssfeed.vm" that contains such error
message. You can modify the message to suit your need.
In this patch, the changes in xwork.xml above will cause entering createrssfeed.action or
configurerssfeed.action into URL leading to the error page defined in configurerssfeed.vm.
Enabled Plugins
Plugins from the repository, once installed are stored in table PLUGINDATA. They are enabled after install.
Disabled Plugins
All Plugins (bundled and from the repository) that have been disabled have an entry in table BANDANA
where BANDANAKEY is plugin.manager.state.Map.
For Example if the pagetree macro had been installed but is currently disabled would be reflected in
BANDANAVALUE
<map>
<entry>
<string>bnpparibas.confluence.pagetree</string>
<boolean>false</boolean>
</entry>
</map>
It turns out that the <boolean> expression is not really evaluated. When the plugin name is present
in the map it is considered as disabled
You may like to use the findattachments.jsp which should detect missing attachments.
Beginning search...
Missing attachment: <path>/attachments/3477/279/1, filename: Final-OdysseyCodingConventions.doc,
filetype: Word Document
As you can see in the above example, the script will report:
• PDF Document
• Image
• XML File
• HTML Document
• Text File
• Word Document
• Excel Spreadsheet
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Java Source File
• Zip Archive
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I find the logged in user?
Should the user not be logged in the user object will be null.
Confluence's component system is powered by Spring, but we've done a lot of nice things to make it
easier for developers to get their hands on a component at any time.
Autowired Objects
If your object is being autowired (for example another plugin module or an XWork action), the easiest
way to access a component is to add a basic Java setter method.
For example, if you need a SpaceManager simply add the following setter method. This setter will be
called when the object is created.
You can also write you own components which are automatically injected into your plugins in the
same way. See Component Plugins for more detail
Non-autowired Objects
If your object is not being autowired, you may need to retrieve the component explicitly. This is done via
the ContainerManager like so:
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I get hold of the
HttpServletRequest?
You should always assume that ServletActionContext.getRequest() will return null. ServletActionContext
is only populated if the request comes in through WebWork. There are a number of circumstances in
which it will not be populated, either because a web request has come in through some other path, or
because there was no web request in the first place:
Treat ServletActionContext as a bonus. If it's populated you can do neat things with it, but don't rely
on it.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I get my macro output
exported to HTML and PDF?
Macros such as the chart macro may produce images, which should be included in HTML and PDF exports.
This is now possible if macros delegate the responsibility of storing the output to Confluence.
ExportDownloadResourceManager
The ExportDownloadResourceManager is responsible for managing the reading and writing of macro
output. Confluence uses this manager to lookup/retrieve macro output for downloads and exports. Hence,
if you would like your macro to support exports, it is required that you use this manager to retrieve the
correct writer to write to.
/**
* Returns a DownloadResourceReader for reading the stored output of the previous execution of
a macro.
* Typically used by HTML and PDF export, macro content downloads.
*
* @param userName the user who is viewing the macro output. Must be the same as the user who
created the macro
* output with {@link #getResourceWriter(String, String, String)}, or an
UnauthorizedDownloadResourceException
* will be thrown.
* @param resourcePath the relative URL of the resource including the application context path.
For example,
* "/confluence/download/temp/chart1756.png". It must be the same path from the {@link
DownloadResourceWriter}.
* @throws UnauthorizedDownloadResourceException if the user requesting the macro output is
different to the user
* who created it
* @throws DownloadResourceNotFoundException if a stored macro output associated with this
resource path cannot be
* found
*/
public DownloadResourceReader getResourceReader(String userName, String resourcePath, Map
parameters)
throws UnauthorizedDownloadResourceException, DownloadResourceNotFoundException
/**
* Returns a DownloadResourceWriter for storing output of a macro in a temporary location.
* This should be typically called by macros that generate output such as images and would like
their
* output to be exported correctly.
*
* @param userName the user who is creating the macro output.
* @param prefix the prefix of the macro output's name
* @param suffix the suffix of the macro output
*/
public DownloadResourceWriter getResourceWriter(String userName, String prefix, String suffix)
The following is an example of how to retrieve the output stream for which you can use to write your
macro output to.
try
{
// write to the output stream
.....
}
finally
{
// close the output stream
if(outputStream != null)
outputStream.close();
}
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I get the base URL of a
Confluence installation?
The base URL is the URL for the root of your Confluence site. For example, the base URL for this site is
http://confluence.atlassian.com. If you have installed Confluence somewhere other than the root
directory of the webserver, for example http://www.example.com/confluence, then your base URL
would be http://www.example.com/confluence.
Confluence attempts to guess the correct base URL for the site during setup. You can change it in the
site's General Configuration.
The context path is the path to Confluence relative to the root directory of the webserver. For example,
the context path for this site is an empty string, because it is deployed at the root. The context path for a
Confluence instance deployed at http://www.example.com/confluence would be /confluence.
First you need the BootstrapManager (see how to retrieve it) then simply call the following method:
In Confluence 2.0 and earlier the method was called bootstrapManager.getDomain(). The
getDomain() method was deprecated in favour of getBaseUrl() in Confluence 2.1, because the
latter name better describes the information it returns.
Information about Confluence, such as the version number, build number and build date, can be retrieved
from the GeneralUtil object.
You can use GeneralUtils public accessors to retrieve public static variables:
• versionNumber
• buildDate
• buildNumber
In Java
or
In Velocity
$generalUtil.versionNumber
$generalUtil.buildNumber
$generalUtil.buildDateString
For instance, part of the Confluence footer is generated in the footer.vm file:
In Wiki markup
User Macros can include the Velocity markup given above. For example, create a macro called 'version'
with no body and the contents:
$generalUtil.versionNumber
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I get the location of the
confluence.home directory?
First you need the BootstrapManager (see how to retrieve it) then simply call the following method:
The recommended way to get resources from the classpath in Confluence is:
ClassLoaderUtils tries a couple of different classloaders, something we've occasionally found necessary in
some application servers.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I make my attachments open
in a new window/tab?
You need to add a TARGET = "_blank" to the <a href> HTML tag.
For example, by using the HTML code below, clicking on the link "a new window" will open the
"newwindow.html" page in a new window:
add the parameter TARGET = "_blank" to the <a href> HTML tag, which will cause the URL specified in
the href parameter to open in a new window or a new tag depending upon the option set in the browser.
So the line above will be modified to:
<a name="$generalUtil.htmlEncode($generalUtil.urlEncode($page.title))-attachment-
$generalUtil.htmlEncode($generalUtil.urlEncode($attachment.fileName))">
#parse ("/pages/includes/attachment_icon.vm")</a> <a href="$generalUtil.htmlEncode("
${req.contextPath}${attachment.downloadPathWithoutVersion}")">
$generalUtil.htmlEncode($attachment.fileName)</a>
add the parameter TARGET = "_blank" to the <a> HTML tag, which will cause the URL specified in the
href parameter to open in a new window or a new tag depending upon the option set in the browser. So
the line above will be modified to:
<a name="$generalUtil.htmlEncode($generalUtil.urlEncode($page.title))-attachment-
$generalUtil.htmlEncode($generalUtil.urlEncode($attachment.fileName))">
#parse ("/pages/includes/attachment_icon.vm")</a> <a href="$generalUtil.htmlEncode("
${req.contextPath}${attachment.downloadPathWithoutVersion}")" TARGET = "_blank">
$generalUtil.htmlEncode($attachment.fileName)</a>
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I prevent my rendered wiki
text from being surrounded by <p> tags?
When wiki text is converted to HTML, the level of conversion is determined by the RenderMode set within
the RenderContext. Understanding RenderMode is quite important, so you should familiarise yourself with
the documentation linked above.
There are two render modes that are useful if you want to avoid the output being placed inside paragraph
tags:
RenderMode.INLINE will suppress the rendering of all block-level HTML elements, including paragraphs,
blockquotes, tables and lists. Inline elements such as text decorations, links and images will still be
rendered.
If you are writing a macro, you will also need to return true from your macro's isInline method.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. How do I tell if a user has permission
to...?
When you're writing a Confluence plugin, it's important to check that the user has permission to do the
operations your plugin is performing. Confluence does not enforce security for you, it's up to your code to
perform these checks.
• In Java Code
• In Velocity Templates
In Java Code:
1. the User object of the user whose permissions you want to check (How do I find the logged in
user?)
2. the permissionManager component from Spring (How do I get a reference to a component?)
The PermissionManager has quite a few methods (Javadoc), but the most important are:
/**
* Determine whether a user has a particular permission against a given target.
*
* @param user the user seeking permission, or null if the anonymous user is being checked
against
* @param permission the permission to check
* @param target the object that the permission is being checked against. If this object
is null, the method
* will return false
* @return true if the user has this permission, false otherwise
* @throws IllegalStateException if the permission being checked against does not apply to the
target
*/
boolean hasPermission(User user, Permission permission, Object target);
/**
* Determine whether a user has permission to create an entity of a particular type within a
given container.
*
* <p>The container is the natural container of the object being created. For example, a
comment is contained
* in a page, which is contained within TARGET_APPLICATION.
*
* @param user the user seeking permission, or null if the anonymous user is being checked
against
* @param container the target that the object is being created within. If this object is null,
the method
* will return false
* @param typeToCreate the type of object being created (see above)
* @return true if the user has permission, false otherwise
* @see com.atlassian.confluence.core.ContentEntityObject#getType()
* @throws IllegalStateException if the permission being checked against does not apply to the
target
*/
boolean hasCreatePermission(User user, Object container, Class typeToCreate);
Simple Permissions
The various values of "something" are all constants of the Permission class listed in this Javadoc. At the
time this document was written, the permission 'verbs' are:
Permission.VIEW
Permission.EDIT
Permission.EXPORT
Permission.REMOVE
Permission.SET_PERMISSIONS
Permission.ADMINISTER
So to check if your user has permission to edit a particular page, the call is:
For global permissions, the 'target object' is considered to be the Confluence application itself. There is a
special target, TARGET_APPLICATION that represents the application as a whole. So to check if someone is
a global administrator, call:
Create Permissions
Checking if someone has the ability to create an object (page, blogpost, space, etc) is a little more
complicated. Every object is created inside some other object. Comments and Attachments are
created inside Pages or BlogPosts. Pages are created inside Spaces. And Spaces are crated inside
TARGET_APPLICATION.
So to check if someone can create something, the question is: "Does this user have permission to create
this KIND OF OBJECT, in this CONTAINER?" In Java, kinds of objects are represented by their class, so to
see if a user can create a comment inside a particular page, you'd call:
In Velocity Templates
While all of the above is very powerful, it's a bit complicated to deal with in a Velocity file. There is an
object in the default velocity context called $permissionHelper which has a bunch of useful methods on
it. All the methods do pretty much what you'd expect them to do, so I'll just link to the Javadoc:
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/docs/api/latest/com/atlassian/confluence/security/
PermissionHelper.html
Code Meaning
100 Continue
101 Switching Protocols
200 OK
201 Created
202 Accepted
203 Non-Authoritative Information
204 No Content
205 Reset Content
206 Partial Content
300 Multiple Choices
301 Moved Permanently
302 Found
303 See Other
304 Not Modified
305 Use Proxy
307 Temporary Redirect
400 Bad Request
401 Unauthorized
402 Payment Required
403 Forbidden
404 Not Found
405 Method Not Allowed
406 Not Acceptable
407 Proxy Authentication Required
408 Request Time-out
409 Conflict
410 Gone
411 Length Required
412 Precondition Failed
413 Request Entity Too Large
414 Request-URI Too Large
415 Unsupported Media Type
416 Requested range not satisfiable
417 Expectation Failed
500 Internal Server Error
501 Not Implemented
502 Bad Gateway
503 Service Unavailable
504 Gateway Time-out
505 HTTP Version not supported
HTTP Headers
It would be useful to obtain information on HTTP response headers. If you are using Mozilla Firefox,
you can download an 'add-ons' (extension) called LiveHTTPHeaders which will allow you to capture this
information. If you are using Internet Explorer, you can use DebugBar instead.
Now try accessing the Confluence main page and all HTTP request headers, cookies descriptions (such
as the seraph authentication 'seraph.os.cookie') will be logged in the pop-up window. Please save this
information in a text file, use the 'Save All' option.
Run the downloaded installation file. After installing the DebugBar, the toolbar should automatically
display on the next IE startup. If not, you might need to show the toolbar in IE by clicking on View >
Explorer Bar then select DebugBar
I am trying to compile a plugin, but get an error about the "target release"
When compiling plugins and using version 1.5 of the JDK, the following error may appear:
javac: target release 1.3 conflicts with default source release 1.5
SOLUTION
The solution is essentially to tell your compiler to target Java 1.3. How to do this will differ depending on
what compiler you are using, but generally, something like this will work:
If you are using Maven to build your project, try adding the following to your project.properties or
build.properties file:
RELATED TOPICS
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. I have checked out the source, and use
IntelliJ IDEA. Where do I go from here?
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. What's the easiest way to render a
velocity template from Java code?
Use VelocityUtils. You will need to provide VelocityUtils with the name of the template you want to render,
and a map of parameters that will be made available within the template as $variables in velocity.
Confluence has a default set of objects for Confluence velocity templates. These are required
for most Confluence velocity macros to work properly. To obtain this context, you should call
MacroUtils.defaultVelocityContext();.
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. What class should my macro extend?
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. What class should my XWork action
plugin extend?
Other action base-classes can be found within Confluence, but we recommend you don't use them - the
hierarchy of action classes in Confluence is over-complicated, and likely to be simplified in the future in a
way that will break your plugins.
Bandana is Atlassian's hierarchical data storage mechanism, it breaks objects into XML and stores them,
to be retrieved later... uses xstream and a little hierarchical magic under the covers and has another
strange Atlassian codename. It is one way to persist data inside your plugin. It is good for global config
types of data.
It uses XStream to serialize Java strings (and objects?) to and from XML.
Examples:
Writing data:
Retrieving data:
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. What is the best way to load a resource
from the classpath?
Because of the different ways that application servers deal with class-loading, just calling
this.getClass().getResourceAsStream() might not work the same everywhere Confluence is
deployed. To help, we have a utility method that checks the various classloaders in a predictable order:
Inside Plugins
Because plugins may be dynamically loaded, each plugin may have its own classloader, separate from the
main Confluence application. This makes loading resources like properties files from inside a plugin JAR a
little tricky.
If the class from which you are loading the resource is in the same jar as the resource file itself (i.e. it's
all part of the same plugin), you can use ClassLoaderUtils as above, and everything will work fine.
However, if you are trying to load the file from a different plugin, or from the main application code, you'll
need an instance of the pluginManager from spring:
InputStream in = pluginManager.getDynamicResourceAsStream(filename)
(That said, you must now ask yourself why you're loading an arbitrary resource from some other plugin?
It seems like a really bad idea to me. If the plugin wants to export that resource to the rest of the
application, it should provide some way of getting at it itself.)
Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. Within a Confluence macro, how do I
retrieve the current ContentEntityObject?
You can retrieve the current ContentEntityObject (ie the content object this macro is a part of), as
follows:
Note that this method might return null if there is no current content object (for example if you are
previewing a page that has not been added yet, or if a remote user is rendering a fragment of notation).
The Confluence Developer Forum is a place for the discussion of extending and customising Confluence.
There are two ways to join the discussion:
Forum Guidelines
Some questions come up on the forum a lot. Make sure you've checked the Confluence Developer FAQ
first.
When taking part in the forum, please keep in mind that Confluence licenses do not include a guaranteed
level of developer support. The Confluence development team follows and contributes to the forum
because it's important to us to have a healthy ecosystem of third-party developers, and because we love
seeing the cool stuff that our customers and partners come up with. That said, we can't respond to every
request, and developers are also expected to help themselves by reading the available documentation,
the API, and occasionally even looking at the Confluence source-code.
Also keep in mind that a lot of the people on the list don't work for Atlassian at all, and are answering
questions because they're nice people.
Looking for existing plugins? See the existing plugins and extensions written by the community in
the Confluence Extensions space.
Confluence's plugin system allows users and developers to customise and extend Confluence.
A plugin is a bundle of code, resources and a special configuration file that can be dropped into a
Confluence server to add new functionality, or change the behaviour of existing features.
• Administrators can drop plugins into their Confluence server to add new functionality to the system.
• Developers can write plugins for their own Confluence server, or share plugins with other Confluence
users.
Some parts of Confluence are implemented entirely as plugins - for example all macros in Confluence 1.3
and later, even those included with the system, are written as plugins.
Every plugin is made up of one or more plugin modules. A single plugin may do many things: a plugin
module represents a single function of the plugin.
For example, a theme plugin will consist of a colour-scheme module to define the theme's colours, a
number of layout modules to define the site's page layouts, and a theme module to combine those pieces
together into a single theme.
Some plugins, such as the macro packs that come with Confluence, are just a collection of unrelated
modules that just happen to be packaged together. Other plugins, such as theme plugins, have modules
that work together to provide some orchestrated functionality.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to install and configure plugins.
If the plugin you wish to install is listed in the Confluence Plugin Repository, you can use the Confluence
Repository Client to install it. Just find the plugin in the list and click the "install" link.
If the plugin you wish to install is not listed in the Confluence Plugin Repository, you can still install it by
uploading it to Confluence.
This document is for administrators who wish to manage plugins installed in their Confluence server, or
install new plugins. Confluence plugins were introduced in Confluence 1.3. For an overview of how plugins
work in Confluence, read the Confluence Plugin Guide.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to install and configure plugins.
Looking for existing plugins? See the existing plugins and extensions written by the community in
the Confluence Extensions space.
Confluence versions 2.0 and later support the Plugin Repository, which provides an alternative way
to install plugins directly from the the plugin libraries.
Plugin Safety
Plugins are very powerful: they can change the behaviour of almost any part of the Confluence
server. This makes it very important that you trust a plugin before you install it. Always be aware of
where (and who) a plugin comes from.
Disabling a plugin module may cause other modules in the same plugin to cease to function
correctly. When in doubt, make sure you disable or enable the entire plugin.
Plugin Safety
Plugins are very powerful: they can change the behaviour of almost any part of the Confluence
server. This makes it very important that you trust a plugin before you install it. Always be aware of
where (and who) a plugin comes from.
The Plugin Repository provides an easy way to install and configure plugins.
• If you are using Confluence version 2.3 or later, the Plugin Repository is included as part of
Confluence.
• If you are using Confluence 2.0 - 2.2.10, you can use the Plugin Repository after you install the
Confluence Repository Client.
• Confluence versions prior to 2.0 cannot use the Plugin Repository, so you will need to install and
configure plugins manually instead.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to install and configure plugins.
On this page:
Along the top of the page, you'll see three items which allow you to choose the plugins you want
displayed:
• Status filter — Defaults to 'All Plugins'. Choose one of the following to limit the list of plugins
displayed:
° 'Installed Plugins' – Plugins which have been installed on your Confluence instance.
° 'Outdated Plugins' — Plugins for which updates are available
° 'Available Plugins' — Plugins which are available, but have not yet been installed.
° 'Supported Plugins' — All plugins which are supported by Atlassian or a third-party.
• Search — Enter text in the middle textbox to quickly find what you're looking for:
° Quickly locate plugins by searching on their title, description, vendor and other details. Just
type what you are looking for and let Confluence do the rest
° The search results are filtered by the status filter (as discussed above), so if you want to see
all installed plugins from Adaptavist.com, for example, set the filter to 'Installed Plugins' and
type 'Adaptavist.com' into the search box.
• Categories list — Filter by category:
Under the filter options, the list of plugins matching the current filter settings is shown in a table.
Each column in the table shows information about a particular plugin, and allows you further
configuration options:
• Plugin Name — Displays the name of the plugin (linked to the detailed information page)and the
plugin vendor (linked to their website if applicable)
° Click the '+' icon to expand the information display showing plugin description.
° Click the '-' icon to hide the description again.
• Status — Shows the current status of this plugin in respect to your Confluence installation:
° Installed - installed and up-to-date
° Outdated - installed, but there are new versions available
° Available - not installed yet
° Non Repository - a version is installed which is not in the repository
not currently supported by Atlassian. In addition, the third party has not yet given detailed
information about support arrangements. This does not necessarily mean that the plugin is not
supported. Please refer to the plugin's home page in the Confluence Extension space.
° The 'Support' column can also contain a link to the third-party plugin support site.
° Read more information about supported plugins.
etc). Although the client (since 1.0.2) warns you of dependencies and (since 1.0.3) will do its
best to check what has been downloaded is what you asked for - Confluence may break as if
you had uploaded the plugins to the Plugin Manger yourself. Where it can, the client will error
constructively allowing you to choose the best course of action for yourself. In general, things
usually work - and if they don't its a bug with the client or the metadata.
° If the Confluence Repository Client encounters a password request when downloading the
plugin (usually case with Commercial plugins), you will be prompted for a username and
password.
° If the plugin is installed into WEB-INF (or otherwise uninstallable) it will display 'Manually
You can click the table headings to sort the table. Click a second time to reverse the sort.
General information and plugin module details are shown at the top of the display and from here you can
disable or enable individual modules.
Note: Disabling a plugin module may cause other modules in the same plugin to cease to function
correctly. When in doubt, make sure you disable or enable the entire plugin.
The most important of these is the 'Data Source' — without this, you'll see no plugins in the list and will
get a fair number of errors.
The 'Earliest Plugin State' allows you to filter the plugin list to versions at or above a specific state: Alpha,
Beta, Release Candidates, Stable. If you are running in a production environment, you will usually want
to set this setting to 'Stable + Release Candidates' or 'Stable Only'.
The 'Plugin Compatibility' setting allows you to restrict the list to only show plugin versions that are
specifically known to work with your version of Confluence.
In many cases, plugins will work with your version of Confluence, but they might be marked as
'unknown' compatibility if the plugin author hasn't been able to test with that specific Confluence version.
As such, it's extremely useful if you find an 'unknown' version of a plugin to work (or not work) with your
Confluence that you let us know (by any means possible) so that we can update the repository to reflect
this.
The 'Category Visibility' setting allows you to trim down the categories list by hiding categories that don't
contain a plugin yet.
There are several plugins that are not currently listed by the Plugin Repository which need to be manually
uploaded either as a file or from a remote server URL.
Above we have described the 'Plugin Repository' screen in the Administration Console. If you wish to
display some information about your plugins on a Confluence page, you can use the Plugin Repository
macros.
These macros are available to Confluence instances ("clients") that have the Confluence Atlassian Plugin
Repository v.2.0.13+ installed and configured to talk to a server that provides data about plugins.
{repository-plugin}
{recentlyupdated-plugins}
Displays an ordered list of the plugins with the most recently released versions, according to the plugin
metadata.
{popular-plugins}
Displays an ordered list of the most popular plugins. The popularity of a plugin is based on number of
downloads of the plugin jar that have been recorded on the server.
{download-stat}
{confluence-status}
{plugin-status}
Displays a list of plugins that need to be updated. Currently, this macro has a bug where it will cause a
Confluence system error if someone who is not logged in tries to view it.
{plugin-repository}
Displays the table of plugin information that by default only appears in the admin section. Info that non-
admins should not see is hidden from them.
RELATED TOPICS
The categories
Confluence plugins have different behaviour based on how they are loaded by Confluence. The plugins
themselves are the same, but based on how they are loaded, they may or may not be upgraded, or
may not be disabled, or may not be uninstalled. This chart should explain how plugins can be loaded by
Confluence, and the ramifications for each choice.
The category any particular plugin is in can vary with Confluence version or circumstance. The examples
mentioned here describe the way particular plugins are loaded by default in Confluence 2.8.
To summarise the relationships of categories in the table, all plugins are either Static or Dynamic. Static
plugins can be further categorised into Core or WEB-INF/lib. Dynamic plugins are divided into Bundled
and Uploaded.
In Confluence, some of the Core plugins are called "System". Plugins can be designated as "System"
by adding a flag to the plugin manifest file. To do this, system=true should be added to the top-
level atlassian-plugin element of the manifest file. The manifest file is generally called atlassian-
plugin.xml, but it could have another name; the Core plugins' files do.
All of the Core plugins once were labeled as "System", but it seems the practice has faded over time. If a
plugin is designated as "System", then it will not show up in the Plugin Manager page in Confluence and
thus cannot be enabled/disabled. However, it will show up in the Plugin Repository Client, where it can be
disabled; allowing disabling there is probably incorrect behavior.
Static plugins that are not marked as "System" (any remaining Core and WEB-INF/lib plugins), are simply
called Static in Confluence. There is no way to tell the WEB-INF/lib and Core plugins apart from within
Confluence. You just have to figure out where the classes are.
Members of the other specific categories - Bundled and Uploaded - can be determined. We can tell which
plugins are Bundled and which plugins are Uploaded, so we know which plugins are Uploaded though this
specific term is never used in the Confluence UI. Instead, they are called Dynamic.
Upgrading plugins
• Core plugins cannot be upgraded.
• WEB-INF/lib plugins can be upgraded by replacing the JAR in WEB-INF/lib and restarting Confluence.
• Bundled plugins can be upgraded using the Plugin Manager or the Plugin Repository Client. A new
plugin jar is uploaded and stored as a Uploaded plugin. Confluence compares the version number
with the Bundled plugin and uses the newer.
• Uploaded plugins are upgradable using the Plugin Manager or the Plugin Repository Client.
When a new plugin jar is uploaded, the previous version is discarded from the database and the
$CONFLUENCE_HOME/plugin-cache.
Confluence goes to some lengths to prevent itself being unusable due to a problematic plugin. However,
sometimes a plugin will manage to do this anyway. To remove a plugin from Confluence when Confluence
is not running:
Looking for plugins? See the existing plugins and extensions written by the community in the
Confluence Extensions space.
Confluence plugins provide a standard mechanism for extending Confluence. By adding plugins to
Confluence you will be able to customise the site's look and feel, add new macros, event listeners,
periodic tasks, and even introduce whole new features.
You can read Confluence Plugin Guide for an overview of what plugins are. This document introduces
Confluence plugins to the developer who may want to write their own.
While Confluence plugins use the same plugin management code as JIRA 3.0 plugins, it's very unlikely
that a JIRA plugin will work in Confluence or vice versa.
Anatomy of a Plugin
A plugin is a single jar file that can be dropped into Confluence's classpath. It consists of
• A plugin descriptor
• (Optional) Java classes
• (Optional) Resources
Plugins are composed of a series of modules, each of which defines a point at which the plugin interfaces
with Confluence.
The Plugin descriptor is an XML file that tells Confluence all about the plugin, and the modules contained
within it. The descriptor must be a single file named atlassian-plugin.xml and must be located at the
root of the jar file. Here's a sample plugin descriptor:
<!-- Every plugin must have a key, which identifies the plugin uniquely to the system -->
<!-- and a name, which is used to display the plugin in menus. -->
<atlassian-plugin key="com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.example"
name="Example Plugin">
<!-- The plugin info block allows you to provide more information about your plugin -->
<plugin-info>
<description>
A sample plugin for demonstrating the file format.
</description>
<!-- Here is where you define your modules. The code you use -->
<!-- to define a module depends on the module itself. This is just -->
<!-- a sample, which will not load if installed into Confluence -->
<!-- Modules must have a key that is unique within the plugin, a name -->
<!-- and an implementing class. -->
<example key="module1" name="Example Module"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.plugins.example.ExampleModule">
<!-- All modules can optionally have a description -->
<description>An example module</description>
</example>
</atlassian-plugin>
Each plugin has a plugin key which must be unique to the plugin. We suggest using the Java convention
of reversing your domain name in order to ensure your key is unique. Each module has a module key
which need only be unique within the plugin it is defined.
Sometimes you will need to uniquely identify a module - you do this with the module complete key.
A module with key fred in a plugin keyed as com.example.modules will have a complete key of
com.example.modules:fred
All plugin modules have a class attribute, which tells the plugin manager which Java class it should
instantiate when loading the module. What class you should provide depends on the module type. For
example, theme, layout and colour-scheme modules can use classes already provided in Confluence (so
you can write a theme pack without any Java code), but for macro and listener modules you need to write
your own implementing class and include it in your plugin.
Java Classes
Because the plugin is a JAR that is dropped into the Confluence classpath, all Java classes contained
within the JAR become a part of the Confluence application. You can include as many classes as you like,
and have them interact with each other. Obviously, it's important to follow the Java package naming
conventions to ensure your plugin's classes do not conflict with Confluence classes, or other plugins.
If you are writing a Java implementation of a plugin module (see the description of the module's class
attribute above), you will be interested in Accessing Confluence Components From Plugin Modules.
You might also want to see the Confluence Developer FAQ, which answers particular questions that have
come up from users regarding coding within Confluence.
Resources are non-Java files that a plugin may need in order to operate. Examples of possible resources
might be:
• A velocity file used to generate HTML for a macro or layout plugin module
• A CSS file required by a theme layout plugin module
• An image referenced from within a layout plugin module
• A macro help file
• A localisation property file
Resource definitions look like this. They can be either a part of the plugin, or part of a particular plugin
module:
<!-- For the localisation property file below, it must be named exampleplugin.properties -->
<!-- located under the resources folder -->
<resource type="i18n" name="i18n" location="resources/exampleplugin" />
The name of the resource defines how the plugin module can locate a particular resource. The type of a
resource tells the module how that resource can be used. A module can look for resources of a certain
type or name: for example the layout plugin required that its help file is a file of type velocity and
name help.
The location of a resource tells the plugin where the resource can be found in the jar file (resources
are loaded by Java's classpath resource-loader). The full path to the file - without a leading slash - is
required.
The simplest kind of resource, supported with all plugin module types, is of type download, which makes
a resource available for download from the Confluence server at a particular URL. See: Downloadable
Plugin Resources.
Plugin Self-Configuration
The configuration URL is a link to a separate page, generally a new xwork action that you have
defined. The WebDAV plugin is a good example of a plugin with a configuration screen. That configuration
screen is available both from the Plugin Manager and from a web-item in the Administration menu.
Confluence is built around Spring, an open-source component framework for for Java.
If you are familiar with Spring, then you may only wish to know that Confluence plugin modules (and
their implementing classes) are autowired by name. Thus, if you want to access a Confluence component
from your plugin, just include the appropriate setter method in your implementing class.
If you want to write Confluence plugins but are unfamiliar with Spring, the rest of this page should give
you more than enough information on how to have your plugin interact with Confluence.
When you are writing anything but the simplest Confluence plugin, you will need to interact with the
Confluence application itself in order to retrieve, change or store information. This document describes
how this can be done.
Manager Objects
At the core of Confluence is a group of "Manager" objects. For example, the pageManager is in charge of
Confluence pages, the spaceManager of spaces, the attachmentManager of attachments, and so on.
Dependency Injection
Traditionally, in a component-based system, components are retrieved from some kind of central
repository. For example, in an EJB-based system, you would retrieve the bean from the application
server's JNDI repository.
Confluence works the other way round. When a plugin module is instantiated, Confluence determines
which components the module needs, and delivers them to it.
Confluence determines which components a module needs by reflecting on the module's methods.
Any method with a signature that matches a standard JavaBeans-style setter of the same name as a
Confluence component will have that component passed to it when the module is initialised.
So, if your plugin module needs to access the pageManager, all you need to do is put the following setter
method on your module's implementing class:
More information
Code Formatting plugin modules are available in Confluence 2.2 and later versions
Code formatting plugin modules allow you to add new languages to the {code} macro. Whenever the
code macro is invoked, the macro checks the 'language' parameter against the languages supported by
the available formatting plugins, and uses that plugin to format the source code.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
• the class attribute defines the class that will be added to the available formatters. This class must
implement com.atlassian.renderer.v2.macro.code.SourceCodeFormatter
package com.atlassian.renderer.v2.macro.code;
/**
* Strategy for converting a block of source code into pretty-printed HTML. SourceCodeFormatters
MUST be forgiving:
* they will be dealing with user-supplied input, so they can't afford to blow up on bad data.
*/
public interface SourceCodeFormatter
{
/**
* Inform the CodeMacro which languages this formatter supports. So if someone writes
{code:java}, then only
* the formatter that returns "java" from this method will be used to format it.
*
* @return an array of languages that this formatter supports
*/
String[] getSupportedLanguages();
/**
* Convert source code into HTML.
*
* @param code the source code as a string
* @param language the programming language that it is believed this code is written in
* @return the source code formatted as HTML
*/
String format(String code, String language);
}
Component plugin modules enable you to add components to Confluence's internal component system
(powered by Spring).
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
Other plugins and objects within Confluence can then be autowired with your component. This is very
useful for having a single component that is automatically passed to all of your other plugin modules (ie a
Manager object).
• the name attribute represents how this component will be referred to in the interface.
• the key attribute represents the internal, system name for your component.
• the class attribute represents the class of the component to be created
• the alias attribute represents the alias this component will be stored with. This element is optional, if
not specified the module key will be used instead.
Autowired Objects
If your object is being autowired (for example another plugin module or an XWork action), the easiest
way to access a component is to add a basic Java setter method.
For example, if you use the above BogusComponent module your object would retrieve the component as
follows:
Non-autowired Objects
If your object is not being autowired, you may need to retrieve the component explicitly. This is done via
the ContainerManager like so:
Notes
Some issues to be aware of when developing a component:
• One component module can depend on another component module but be careful of circular
references (ie A requires B, B requires A).
• The component "namespace" is flat at the moment, so choose a sensible alias for your component.
Decorator plugin modules are available in Confluence 2.5 and later versions
Decorator plugin modules allow you to add decorators without using a Theme Plugin.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
• the page attribute of decorator defines the name of the decorator resource file
• the pattern element defines the url pattern for which the decorator will be applied to (you can only
have one pattern per decorator)
<html>
<head>
<title>$title</title>
#standardHeader()
</head>
<div id="PageContent">
<table class="pagecontent" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td valign="top" class="pagebody">
<div class="pageheader">
<span class="pagetitle">$title</span>
</div>
$body
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>
You can familiarise yourself with Velocity at the Velocity Template Overview and decorators in general at
the Sitemesh homepage.
Confluence plugins may define downloadable resources. If your plugin requires Confluence serve
additional static files such as images, Javascript or CSS, you will need to use downloadable plugin
resources to make them available.
Due to a bug in Confluence versions 1.4 through 1.4.2, downloadable plugin resources only function
for plugins that have been deployed by copying them into confluence/WEB-INF/lib. Plugins that
have been uploaded dynamically through the web interface, or copied into confluence.home/
plugins will not be able to serve resources. This bug is fixed for Confluence 1.4.3.
Downloadable resources are configured to map a name of some downloadable file to its location within
the plugin jar-file.
• Resources can be downloaded either within a plugin module, or as a resource of the entire plugin.
° Resources are always looked up relative to a plugin module (see below). If a resource can not
be found in the plugin module, it will then be looked for in the plugin itself.
• Each resource must be of type="download"
• The name of the resource is how it will be referenced from within the application
• The location of the resource is where it appears within the plugin itself
• An optional content-type parameter can be used to supply the file's MIME type
° In the absence of a content-type, the application will attempt to guess the file's type from its
file extension. For common file extensions, an explicit content-type is not necessary.
If your plugin requires a lot of resources, you may wish to expose a directory of files as resources, rather
than writing definitions for each individual file.
For example:
In a velocity template, you should use the $req.contextPath property to ensure that your resources are
always relative to the URL of the Confluence server:
$req.contextPath/download/resources/confluence.extra.impresence:aim/aimon.gif
Editor plugin modules are available in Confluence 2.5 and later versions
Editor plugin modules allow you to implement Wysiwyg editors for editing Confluence pages. Currently,
Confluence only supports the use of one wysiwg editor during editing even if there are multiple
editor plugins enabled. It is not guaranteed that any one editor will be used over another, hence it is
recommended that only one editor is enabled at a time.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
The class attribute defines the Java class for which the editor will interact with Confluence. This class
must implement com.atlassian.confluence.plugin.editor.
Editor Interface
All editors must implement the following interface:
package com.atlassian.confluence.plugin.editor;
/**
* This interface allows Wysiwyg editors to be plugged in to Confluence.
*/
public interface Editor
{
/**
* Returns javascript functions to allow thw wiki-textarea.vm to interface with the editor.
*
* The Javascript returned must define the functions:
*
* onShowEditor() -- this is called just after the DIV containing the editor is made visible.
It is a hook where you
* can place any special code needed at this point.
* onHideEditor() -- this is called just before the DIV containing the editor is hidden. It is
a hook where you
* can place any special code needed at this point.
* setEditorValue(newValue) -- put the text in newValue into the editor. This is called when
the editor needs new
* content -- it is *not* called to set the initial content. That should be done either by
providing the
/**
* Returns the div contents to display the editor itself.
* @return a String containing a velocity template
*/
String getDivContentsTemplate();
/**
* Return true if the user agent string indicates a browser which is supported by this editor
* @param userAgent
* @return true if this editor is supported
*/
boolean supportedUserAgent(String userAgent);
/**
* Perform any necessary escaping of the HTML rendered by Confluence. The
AbstractPreviewPageAction.getWysiwygContent()
* method uses this method to escape the rendered HTML.
*/
String escapeHtml(String html);
/**
* Return a string of CSS which will be appended to the standard stylesheet if it is requested
from /styles/wysiwyg-action
*
* Note that it is up to the editor implementation to retrieve this stylesheet and apply it to
the editor contents --
* the page containing the editor is styled with the normal stylesheet.
*/
String getEditorSpecificCss();
}
For an example, you can view the source for the TinyMCE Plugin.
Availability
Listener plugins are available in Confluence 1.4 and later.
Every time something important happens within Confluence (a page is added or modified, the
configuration is changed, etc.), an 'event' is triggered. Listeners allow you to extend Confluence by
installing code that responds to those events.
Plugin Events
Confluence events are currently processed synchronously - that is, Confluence will wait for your
event to finish processing before returning from the method that was the source of the event. This
makes it very important that any event listener you write completes as quickly as possible.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
The listener module definition has no configuration requirements beyond any other module: just give it a
name, a key, and provide the name of the class that implements the listener.
import com.atlassian.confluence.event.events.ConfluenceEvent;
/**
* Defines a listener for Confluence events.
*/
public interface EventListener
{
/**
* Perform some action as a response to a Confluence event. The EventManager will
* ensure that this is only called if the class of the event matches one of the
* classes returned by getHandledEventClasses
*
* @param event some event triggered within Confluence
*/
void handleEvent(ConfluenceEvent event);
/**
* Determine which event classes this listener is interested in.
*
* The EventManager performs rudimentary filtering of events by their class. If
* you want to receive only a subset of events passing through the system, return
* an array of the Classes you wish to listen for from this method.
*
* For the sake of efficiency, only exact class matches are performed. Sub/superclassing
* is not taken into account.
*
* Returning an empty array will allow you to receive every event.
*
* @return An array of the event classes that this event listener is interested in,
* or an empty array if the listener should receive all events. <b>Must not</b>
* return null.
*/
Class[] getHandledEventClasses();
}
<Object><Operation>Event
For example, we have the following event types relating to space events: SpaceCreateEvent,
SpaceUpdateEvent, SpaceRemoveEvent. In the above description space would correspond to <Object>
and create, update, or remove would correspond to <Operation>.
Occasionally, an operation is so singular that its meaning will be obvious without use of this naming
convention; for example a LoginEvent or ConfigurationEvent.
A full catalogue of the events available within Confluence will be forthcoming before the 1.4 final release.
Limitations of Events
• Events are a notification that something has occurred. The event system is not designed to allow a
listener to veto the action that caused the event.
• There is no loop-detection. If you write a listener for the SpaceModifiedEvent that itself causes a
SpaceModifiedEvent to be generated, you are responsible for preventing the ensuing infinite loop.
Example Code
A more detailed example, with sample code, can be found in Writing an Event Listener Plugin Module.
Overview
For an introduction to event listener plugin modules, please read Event Listener Plugins.
The easiest thing here is to consult the latest API, in the package com.atlassian.confluence.event.events
. When you implement an EventListener you will provide an array of Class objects which represent the
events you wish to handle.
The naming of most events are self explanitory (GlobalSettingsChangedEvent or ReindexStartedEvent for
example), however there are some which need further clarification:
Implement getHandledEventClasses()
The getHandledEventClasses() method holds an array of class objects representing the events you wish
to listen for.
• Your listener will only receive events of the types specified in getHandledEventClasses()
• You must specify all the event types you need - specifying a superclass will not include its
subclasses
• Returning an empty array will cause your listener to receive every event Confluence produces
So, if you want your listener to receive only SpaceCreatedEvent and SpaceRemovedEvent
/**
* Returns an empty array, thereby handling every ConfluenceEvent
* @return
*/
public Class[] getHandledEventClasses()
{
return new Class[0];
}
Implement handleEvent()
The implementation below simply relies upon the toString() implementation of the event and logs it to a
log4j appender.
log.info(event);
}
Most often, a handleEvent(..) method will type check each event sent through it and execute some
conditional logic.
A full example of an EventListener class that listens for login and logout events can be found in
EventListener Example.
The atlassian-plugin.xml file has been described elsewhere in detail. This is an example of a listener
plugin module included in an atlassian-plugin.xml file.
Find an example of an EventListener below, which listens for the LoginEvent and LogoutEvent .
package com.atlassian.confluence.extra.userlister;
import com.atlassian.confluence.event.EventListener;
import com.atlassian.confluence.event.events.ConfluenceEvent;
import com.atlassian.confluence.event.events.LoginEvent;
import com.atlassian.confluence.event.events.LogoutEvent;
import com.atlassian.plugin.PluginManager;
import bucket.container.ContainerManager;
return userLister;
}
Extractor plugin modules are available in Confluence 1.4 and later versions
Extractor plugins allow you to hook into the mechanism by which Confluence populates its search index.
Each time content is created or updated in Confluence, it is passed through a chain of extractors that
assemble the fields and data that will be added to the search index for that content. By writing your own
extractor you can add information to the index.
Extractor plugins can be used to extract the content from attachment types that Confluence does not
support,
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
• Extractor plugins are closely tied to the API of the Lucene Java library
Confluence's internal search is built on top of the Lucene Java library. While familiarity with Lucene
is not an absolute requirement for writing an extractor plugin, you'll need it to write anything more
than the most basic of plugins.
Extractor Plugins
Here is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file containing a single search extractor:
• the class attribute defines the class that will be added to the extractor chain. This class must
implement bucket.search.lucene.Extractor
• the priority attribute determines the order in which extractors are run. Extractors are run from the
highest to lowest priority. Extractors with the same priority may be run in any order.
As a general rule, all extractors should have priorities below 1000, unless you are writing an
extractor for a new attachment type, in which case it should be greater than 1000.
If you are not sure what priority to choose, just go with priority="900" for regular extractors, and
priority="1200" for attachment content extractors.
To see the priorities of the extractors that are built into Confluence, look in WEB-INF/classes/
plugins/core-extractors.xml and WEB-INF/classes/plugins/attachment-extractors.xml.
From Confluence-2.6.0, these files are packaged inside confluence-2.6.0.jar; we have instructions
for Editing files within .jar archives if you're unfamiliar with the process.
package bucket.search.lucene;
import bucket.search.Searchable;
import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
• The document parameter is the Lucene document that will be added to the search index for the
object that is being saved. You can add fields to this document, and the fields will be associated with
the object in the index.
• The defaultSearchableText is the main body of text that is associated with this object in the
search index. It is stored in the index as a Text field with the key "content". If you want to add
text to the index such that the object can be found by a regular Confluence site search, append it
to the defaultSearchableText. (Remember to also append a trailing space, or you'll confuse the next
piece of text that's added!)
• The searchable is the object that is being saved, and passed through the extractor chain.
An Example Extractor
The following example extractor is untested, but it associates a set of page-level properties with the
page in the index, both as part of the regular searchable text, and also as Lucene Text fields that can be
searched individually, for example in a custom {abstract-search} macro.
package com.example.extras.extractor;
import bucket.search.lucene.Extractor;
import bucket.search.Searchable;
import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
import org.apache.lucene.document.Field;
import com.atlassian.confluence.core.ContentEntityObject;
import com.atlassian.confluence.core.ContentPropertyManager;
import com.opensymphony.util.TextUtils;
if (TextUtils.stringSet(value))
{
defaultSearchableText.append(value).append(" ");
Debugging
There's a really primitive Lucene index browser hidden in Confluence which may help when debugging.
You'll need to tell it the filesystem path to your $conf-home/index directory.
http://yourwiki.example.com/admin/indexbrowser.jsp
Attachment content extractor plugins enable Confluence to index the contents of attachments that it may
not otherwise understand. Before you read this document, you should be familiar with Extractor Plugins.
package bucket.search.lucene.extractor;
import bucket.search.lucene.Extractor;
import bucket.search.lucene.SearchableAttachment;
import bucket.search.Searchable;
import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
import com.opensymphony.util.TextUtils;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
/** Override this method if you can not get the functionality you want by overriding
getMatchingContentTypes() and getMatchingFilenameExtensions() */
protected boolean shouldExtractFrom(String fileName, String contentType);
/** Override this method to return the MIME content-types that your plugin knows how to extract
text from. If you have already overridden shouldExtractFrom(), this method is useless */
protected String[] getMatchingContentTypes()
{
return new String[0];
}
/** Override this method to return the filename extensions that your plugin knows how to
extract
text from. If you have already overridden shouldExtractFrom(), this method is useless */
protected String[] getMatchingFileExtensions()
{
return new String[0];
}
/** Override this method to do the actual work of extracting the content of the attachment.
Your extractor
should return the text that is to be indexed */
protected abstract String extractText(InputStream is, SearchableAttachment attachment) throws
IOException;
}
The first attachment content extractor that returns true from shouldExtractFrom, and a not-null,
not-empty String from extractText() will cause all remaining attachment content extractors not to
run against this file. Thus, it's important to get the priority value for your plugin right, so general,
but inaccurate extractors are set to run after specific, more accurate extractors.
package com.example.extras.extractor;
import.com.hypothetical.id3.Id3Tag
import bucket.search.lucene.extractor.BaseAttachmentContentExtractor;
import bucket.search.lucene.SearchableAttachment;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
Job plugin modules enable you to add repeatable tasks to Confluence, which are in turn scheduled by
Trigger Plugins.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
• the name attribute represents how this component will be referred to in the Confluence interface.
• the key attribute represents the internal, system name for your Job. This is what the Trigger will
refer to.
• the class attribute represents the class of the Job to be created. The class must have a no-argument
constructor, or it will not be able to be instantiated by Confluence.
Note that in Confluence 2.3 you can also use a Spring Plugin as a job. This allows you to inject other
Spring components into the Job, via the "jobDataAsMap" property of the job. An example is shown below.
You cannot do this in Confluence 2.2.
Plugins containing Spring JobDetailBeans can't be dynamcally loaded at present, due to classloading
issues.
To run Confluence in another language, you must install a language pack plugin for that translation.
Guides and tools for collaboratively creating translations have been made available to the Confluence
community.
This page provides a technical overview of plugins, for users interested in creating or updating a
translation. To install a translation, check out Community Translations.
Translations for the Rich Text Editor can be part of a Confluence language pack plugin.
Directory Structure
The location of the three files that compose a Language Pack plugin is as follows:
./src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/<PATH_OF_PROPERTIES_FILE>
./src/etc/templates/languages/<LANGUAGE_KEY>/<LANGUAGE_KEY>.gif
./src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core/
ConfluenceActionSupport_de_DE.properties
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates/languages
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates/languages/de_DE
./confluence-2.2-std/plugins/de_DE/src/etc/templates/languages/de_DE/de_DE.gif
This is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file for a Language Pack plugin for German:
The atlassian-plugin.xml file declares the language being bundled using the following attributes:
These values are based off those defined in the java.util.Locale class. For information on the valid values
for the language, country and variant attributes, please see the java.util.Locale documentation.
The key attribute is an aggregation of the the three previous attributes, in the same format as that of
java.util.Locale: language[_country][_variant]
Flag Images
Language packs define a flag that is to be used to represent the language. The atlassian-plugin.xml
defines the language property:
When selecting a language, the flag defined above will be displayed. Additionally, the flag will appear
during the setup process.
This Java Properties file contains key-value pairs for each string in Confluence, and supports variables.
For example:
remove.all.name=Remove All
view.mail.thread.desc.full=Entire Thread (Showing {0} of {1})
If you would like to translate Confluence into your local language, follow the instructions below on
creating a language pack plugin from an example.
The Confluence community is sharing their in-progress and complete translations. You should check that
a shared translation to your target language has not already been started here.
Preparation
Start by checking out the technical overview of a Language Pack Plugin. Once you are familiar with the
structure and content of a plugin, you can move on to creating your own:
1. Check that you have the latest version of Confluence here. If not, you are recommended to install
the latest version for translation, though you can use any version newer than 2.2. Refer to the guide
on Upgrading Confluence for instructions.
2. If you do not already have Apache Ant installed, download the latest version and setup your
environmental variables according to the manual
3. If you are using Confluence 2.2.0 only, you will need to unzip the language plugin base files from
languages.zip into a subdirectory of <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY> called languages
1. Unzip the example en_AU language pack en_AU.zip into a subdirectory of <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-
DIRECTORY>/languages called en_AU. Note that is the file is just a renamed copy of default English
properties file
2. We will now update the properties file in the example to the latest version. Open your Confluence
install directory and copy the confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core
\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file to the example plugin directory src\etc\com
\atlassian\confluence\core.
3. Remove the old ConfluenceActionSupport_en_AU.properties file, and rename
ConfluenceActionSupport.properties to ConfluenceActionSupport_en_AU.properties.
4. Locate the plugin descriptor file, ConfluenceActionSupport properies file and flag image
<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/en_AU/src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/en_AU/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core/
ConfluenceActionSupport_en_AU.properties
<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/en_AU/src/etc/templates/languages/en_AU/en_AU.png
5. Detemine your language plugin key <KEY> using your country and locale according to the Language
Pack Plugins guide
6. Atlassian has licensed a set of flags for use with translations. Delete en_AU.png and download the
appropriate flag from Language Pack Flags, renaming it to the correct key
7. Update atlassian-plugin.xml to contain the relevant <KEY> and other references, including
image type. Refer to the first section from the above Language Pack Plugins for help on deciding
what to modify
8. Rename the directory structure and filenames that contain en-AU to your own <KEY>. The directory
should now appear as
<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY>/src/etc/atlassian-plugin.xml
<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY>/src/etc/com/atlassian/confluence/core/
ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>.properties
<CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages/<KEY>/src/etc/templates/languages/<KEY>/<KEY>.png
You are now ready to build the plugin with the default English text to check that your setup is
are correct. These next few steps deploy the default English version of the pack under your own
language
9. From the command line, go to <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL-DIRECTORY>/languages and execute
5. Edit the file content, referring to Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content for more information
on how to modify the string values.
6. Call the translation tool to export the updates back into the localised properties file. For the example
Russian translation, open a terminal window, go to the translation_tool directory and call
7. Once you have completed editing, you must copy and rename the localised translation back to the
language plugin directory. For frequent updates, you may wish to create a script to do this.
8. To view the updates after copying across the new properties file, select the language plugin for your
translation, then restart Confluence and refresh your browser.
By providing Atlassian permission to bundle complete translations with the Confluence install you
will soon be able to select your local language from the Confluence translations list under System
Administration, without needing to package it as a plugin.
These images are only for us within Confluence plugins and may not be redistributed with any other
code. For license details, see license.txt
(view as slideshow)
submit.query.name=Submit Query
submit.query.name=Anfrage senden
Some strings use variables or hyperlinks to provide contextual information. Variables are shown as
{NUMBER} while hyperlinks are shown as <a href="{NUMBER}">LINK ALIAS</a>. Translations must take
into account the positioning of variables, and check that links occur over the relevant phrase. Using
German again as an example
This tag uses a variable to show the number of matches, and a link the user can click to include those
matches. The German version must place the 'matches' variable in the adjusted location, and reapply the
hyperlink to the relevant phrase.
The Rich Text Editor provided by Confluence is TinyMCE. In Confluence version 2.2.10 and above it is
possible to provide translations for the tooltips and labels in the Rich Text Editor.
Most of the editor's internationalised text consists of its tooltips. There are also a few labels such as those
in the Image Properties dialog. If you are using Confluence in a language other than English, you will
want to translate these messages as well as the standard Confluence text.
• The translations for the rich text editor can be part of a Confluence language pack plugin. The
TinyMCE properties can be included in the ConfluenceActionSupport properties file, along with the
standard Confluence properties.
• If your language pack does not contain translations for the rich text editor, the text will show in
English.
In Confluence versions 2.5.4 and earlier, Rich Text Editor translations can not be installed as a
language pack. Refer to earlier documentation for a workaround.
The core editing strings for the Rich Text Editor translations are found in the tinymce.properties file.
Copy the properties from the above file and append them to the
ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>.properties file, which is described here. Now you can create or add
the language pack plugin.
Example
Below is a partial listing of the core TinyMCE properties. The properties consist of 'key=value' pairs. To
translate from English to another language, you would replace the text to the right of the '=' sign with
the translation.
# English
## TinyMCE core
tinymce.bold_desc=Bold (Ctrl+B)
tinymce.italic_desc=Italic (Ctrl+I)
tinymce.underline_desc=Underline (Ctrl+U)
tinymce.striketrough_desc=Strikethrough
.
.
.
## paste plugin
tinymce.paste.paste_text_desc=Paste as Plain Text
tinymce.paste.paste_text_title=Use CTRL+V on your keyboard to paste the text into the window.
tinymce.paste.paste_text_linebreaks=Keep linebreaks
.
.
.
This guide is for translating Confluence into non-English languages using a Spreadsheet, and covers:
To make small updates, it is quicker to translate the file directly. If your changes are more substantial,
you may prefer to translate using Excel.
Translating Directly
This approach uses any file editor. If your translation uses English characters, you can skip to the next
section.
If you do not have the Sun Java JDK installed, please download it now. Version 5.0 can be downloaded
here.
1. Create a script or batch file that uses the native2ascii.exe program bundled in <JAVA-JDK-
DIRECTORY>/bin to convert from the natively encoded file back to the Unicode file. For example,
update the Russian properties file with a script or batch file that calls
1. Open the properties file (or it's natively encoded equivalent) for editing, translate some or all of the
properties file into your target language, and save the changes. If you are translating into a non-
Unicode language, always edit ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>-native.txt, otherwise modify
ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>.properties.
2. Edit the file content in a text editor, referring to Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content for
more information on how to modify the string values. Users who are unsatisfied with simply opening
two copies of the file in their favourite editor may want to try this freeware properties editor, that
allows side-by-side comparisons.
3. For non-Unicode translations only, run the native2ascii script to update
ConfluenceActionSupport<KEY>.properties
4. If you wish to test the update, copy the file back to its original location in the plugin. Then restart
Confluence.
5. Edit the file content, referring to Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content for more information
on how to modify the string values.
6. Call the translation tool to export the updates back into the localised properties file. For the example
Russian translation, open a terminal window, go to the translation_tool directory and call
7. Once you have completed editing, you must copy and rename the localised translation back to the
language plugin directory. For frequent updates, you may wish to create a script to do this.
8. To view the updates after copying across the new properties file, select the language plugin for your
translation, then restart Confluence and refresh your browser.
Lifecycle plugins allow you to perform tasks on application startup and shutdown.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
Application Lifecycle
Startup is performed after Confluence has brought up its Spring and Hibernate subsystems. If Confluence
is being set up for the first time, the startup sequence is run after the completion of the setup wizard.
This means that lifecycle plugins can assume access to a fully populated Spring container context, and a
working database connection. (i.e. you don't need to check isContainerSetup() or isSetupComplete())
Shutdown is performed when the application server is shutting down the web application, but before the
Spring context is disposed of.
Shutdown lifecycle tasks are most useful for cleaning up resources or services that would otherwise
leak in situations where the web application is being restarted, but the JVM is not exiting. (i.e.
services that retain classloaders or threads that would otherwise prevent the application from being
garbage-collected)
• The key is the required plugin module key, which must be unique within the plugin.
• The name is the required display name for the plugin.
• The class is the required class name for the lifecycle service implementation.
• The sequence number is required, and determines the order in which lifecycle plugins are run. On
startup, they are run from lowest to highest sequence number, then in reverse order on shutdown.
package com.atlassian.config.lifecycle;
/**
* Called on application shutdown
*
* @param context the application's lifecycle context
* @throws Exception if something goes wrong during the shutdown process. The remaining
shutdown items
* will still be run, but the lifecycle manager will log the error.
*/
void shutdown(LifecycleContext context) throws Exception;
}
However, for convenience, and to make it easy to plug in third-party lifecycle events that
are implemented as servlet context listeners, lifecycle service classes can instead implement
javax.servlet.ServletContextListener – the contextInitialized() method will be called on
startup, and contextDestroyed() on shutdown.
Sequences
The sequence numbers of the lifecycle modules determine the order in which they are run. On startup,
modules are run from lowest to highest sequence number, then on shutdown that order is reversed (first
in, last out). As a general guideline:
• If your startup lifecycle item has a sequence less than 800, you can't assume that the configuration
or database schema are current
• If you have a sequence number greater than 5000, you must keep in mind that scheduled jobs
(including Job Plugins) may run before you've started up, or after you've shut down.
Macros are Confluence code that can be invoked from inside a page by putting the name of the macro
in curly brackets. Users of Confluence will be familiar with macros like {color} or {children} or {rss}.
Thanks to the plugin system, it is easy to write and install new macros into a Confluence server.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
Each macro is a plugin module of type "macro", packaged with whatever Java classes and other resources
(i.e. Velocity templates) that the macro requires in order to run. Generally, similar macros are packaged
together into a single plugin, for ease of management. Here is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file
The name of the macro defines how it will be referenced from the page. So if you define your macro as
having name="tasklist", the macro will be called from the page as {tasklist}.
The class attribute of the macro defines what Java class will be used to process that macro.
This is the class you need to write in order for the macro to function. It must implement the
com.atlassian.renderer.v2.macro.Macro interface.
Confluence 1.4 includes a compatibility layer that will run the majority, but not all macros from
Confluence 1.3. Two thirds of the macros shipped with Confluence are still written to the old Radeox
macro API and are run in compatibility mode.
Build a plugin
Maven
If your plugin is one based on the Maven instructions or has the appropriate pom.xml files, you can use
Maven to build your plugin. Simply run the command: mvn package. This will build a jar file and deposit
it in the $my_plugin_dir/target directory.
Then you can install the plugin using the Plugin Administration interface within Confluence. However, if
you need to install an XWork plugin, see the Ant instructions below.
Ant
You will have to have Ant installed in order to build the macro plugins.
Use the following commands from within the plugins directory in you Confluence installation to:
You must use this method if your plugin contains xwork actions. Plugins installed via ant are not
preserved when you upgrade Confluence, so if your plugin does not contain xwork actions, you should
install it via the Administration, Plugin Manager page, where you can browse for and upload plugins.
This section is a step by step description of creating a plugin. It assumes familiarity with your operating
system's command line
The help file is a file containing a fragment of HTML. Your HTML will be inserted into a two-columned
table, so you should provide a single table row with two columns. On the left-hand side, put usage
examples of your macro. On the right hand side provide a description and sample output.
The file will be rendered through Velocity, which means useful things like $req.contextPath are available
to you.
Here's an example of the help file used for the {note} macro:
<tr bgcolor=ffffff>
<!-- The left-hand table cell should contain usage examples -->
<td>
{note:title=Be Careful}<br />
The body of the note here..<br />
{note}
</td>
<!-- The right-hand cell describes the macro and its available arguments -->
<!-- and may include sample output -->
<td>
<p>
Prints a simple note to the user.
The help file is included in your macro as a plugin resource of type "velocity" and name "help". Here's the
plugin definition of the note macro, including its help file:
The "help-section" parameter is optional, and determines which section of the notation guide the macro
will be documented in. The following sections are available (Note that regular wiki markup is also defined
in here, so some sections like 'breaks' are unlikely to be appropriate for any real macro):
If you don't provide a help section, your macro documentation will appear in the "Macros" section of the
notation guide. (This section only appears in the notation guide if it is needed).
If you want to distribute your user macro as a plugin, please see User Macro Plugins. If you want to
create more complex, programmatic macros in Confluence, you may need to write a Macro Plugin. Note
also that Macro Plugins and User Macro Plugins can appear in the Confluence Notation Guide, whereas
User Macros do not.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
To create a user macro,
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'User Macros in the left-hand panel.
2. Click 'Create a User Macro' at the top of the list of macros.
3. Enter the macro attributes as explained below, then click the 'Save' button.
Screenshot: Creating a User Macro
• 'Macro Name' — enter the text that you will type, within curly brackets, to invoke the macro from
within a page. E.g. to invoke the 'floatright' macro defined in the above screenshot, you would type:
{floatright}
• 'Macro has a body' — check this box if you will pass body-text to the macro when you invoke it from
within a page, e.g. :
{floatright}my text{floatright}
If you tick the Macro has a body checkbox, you will need to choose one of three options listed
below.
• For 'Output', choose one of the following options:
° 'Macro generates HTML markup' — choose this if you wish to write your Template in HTML
markup.
When you select 'Macro has a body', anything the user types within the body of the macro will be
available in the macro in the $body variable. The options below allow you to tell Confluence to pre-
process the body before it is placed in the macro output.
• Use unprocessed macro body — the body of the macro will be output verbatim, including any HTML
markup. For example if the macro body is <b>body</b>, it will be displayed as body in the page.
• Escape HTML in macro body — the body of the macro will be output with HTML markup escaped. So
if the macro body is <b>body</b>, it will be displayed as <b>body</b> in the page.
• Convert macro body wiki markup to HTML — the body of the macro will be converted from wiki text
to HTML markup. So if the macro body is *body*, it will be displayed as body in the page.
• The name attribute of the macro is how you will use it from within a page, ie {name}.
• The template attribute of the macro is written in the Velocity templating language, and controls the
rendering of the macro itself.
As an example, let's write a simple macro that simply creates a red box (using an existing Confluence
style) around some text (useful for writing about error conditions for example - hence the macro name
'error').
Take a look at an example of a 'Hello World' macro.
After clicking "New User Macro", enter error as the Name of your macro, and then put the following in
the Template text area:
<div class="errorbox">$body</div>
Then click Add. You should now see your new macro in the User Macros library, and you can now enable
and disable it individually.
To use the macro within a page, you would add notation like:
{error}This is bad{error}
And your page would (magically!) have an error box on it, like so:
This is bad
Another example to demonstrate how you can pass parameters into your macro. Say you wanted to write
your own font colour macro:
Where red, blue and green are the 1st, 2nd and 3rd parameters respectively.
Available objects
The user macro above uses the $body object, which is available for use within your user macro template
if the macro has a body. You can pass parameters to your user macro in the same way as any other
macro (separated by | signs), these parameters are provided to your template as param1, param2, ...
paramN.
Normally, a parameter like $param2 that is missing will appear as '$param2' in the output. To display
nothing when a variable is not set, use an exclamation mark after the dollar sign like '$!param2'.
More information on object usage is available from the Velocity Template Overview.
• The first way is to create a user macro. You need to be a Confluence Administrator to do this. Below
is an example.
• The second, and more difficult, way is to create a user plugin.
1. Go to the 'Administration Console' and click 'User Macros' under 'Configuration' in the left-hand
panel.
2. Click 'Create a User Macro' at the top of the list of macros.
3. Enter the macro attributes as shown in the following screenshot.
4. Click the 'Save' button.
So, now you can add the following Wiki Markup on your Confluence page:
{helloworld}Matthew{helloworld}
More Information
The macro itself is written in the Velocity Templating Language. You can find more information in the
Velocity User Guide from Apache.
RELATED TOPICS
User Macros
Macro Plugins
Macros are written and deployed into Confluence as Macro Plugins. This page describes how to write a
macro.
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/docs/api/latest/com/atlassian/renderer/v2/macro/
Macro.html
When writing a macro, you will need to override the following methods:
Understanding RenderMode
The RenderMode tells the Confluence wiki renderer which wiki-conversion rules should be applied to a
piece of text. Once again, the best place to start is the Javadoc:
http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/docs/api/latest/com/atlassian/renderer/v2/
RenderMode.html
There are a number of pre-defined render modes. The ones that would be useful to macro writers are
probably:
Mode Description
RenderMode.ALL Render everything
RenderMode.NO_RENDER Don't render anything: just return the raw wiki text
RenderMode.INLINE Render things you'd normally find inside a
paragraph, like links, text effects and so on
RenderMode.SIMPLE_TEXT Render text made up only of paragraphs, without
images or links
If you want finer control, RenderMode is implemented as a bit-field. Each constant of RenderMode starting
with F_ is a feature of the renderer that can be turned on or off. You can construct a RenderMode by
manipulating these bits through the following methods:
Like all Confluence plugin modules, Macros are autowired by the Spring framework. To obtain a manager
object through which you can interact with Confluence itself, all you need to do is provide a Javabeans-
style setter method for that component on your Macro class. See Accessing Confluence Components From
Plugin Modules
Macros are often most powerful when combined with other plugin modules. For example, the {livesearch}
macro uses an XWork plugin to perform its server-side duties, and the {userlister} plugin uses a listener
plugin to listen for login events and determine who is online. You may also consider using a component
plugin to share common code or state between macros.
If you want to know exactly what happens when a macro is processed, the following (slightly overly-
detailed) description should help:
case: "blah|width=10|height=20"
4. The MacroRendererComponent calls isInline() on the macro to determine if its results should be
inserted into the surrounding page as an inline (i.e. part of a surrounding paragraph) or a block
element.
Path Converter plugin modules are available in Confluence 2.8 and later versions.
Path Converter plugin modules are useful for developers who are writing Confluence plugins. The Path
Converter modules allow you to install custom path mapping as a part of your plugin.
• For more information about plugins in general, read the Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins and macros, read Installing and Configuring Plugins
manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins .
</atlassian-plugin>
Example
This converter is used by Confluence to convert the friendly /display/SpaceKey/PageTitle/ URL format
into a request against the correct WebWork action.
The handles method is called (in order of weight) on each converter and the first to return true will have
its getPath method called.
The getPath method will convert the friendly path into a ConvertedPath object.
The ConvertedPath object expects a URL template and a series of parameters. It uses Velocity internally
to merge the template and the parameters, producing a final URL.
Notes
The com.atlassian.confluence.servlet.simpledisplay.SimpleDisplayServlet will pass each
incoming request that starts with '/display' to each of its configured converters. The converters will be
checked starting with the converter with the lowest weight.
The PathConverters are autowired at registration time, so add a setter method on your converter to get
access to Confluence's components.
// other methods
Core Converters
Confluence includes a series of core path converters that are used to provide friendly URLs for standard
Confluence resources.
You can use any weight for your converter. If the same weight is used by multiple converters, they are
executed in order of registration.
Renderer Component plugin modules are available in Confluence 2.8 and later.
Renderer Component plugins allow you to add additional processors when converting wiki markup to
HTML.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
Warning
This document concerns plugging renderer components into Confluence. The implementation of renderer
components themselves is not documented.
Renderer component plugins were added to Confluence to make certain development tasks easier inside
Atlassian. They are documented here for Atlassian developers, and for the sake of completeness, but we
do not recommend customers add their own plugins to this area. The wiki markup rendering process is
quite fragile, and simple changes can have wide-reaching effects.
• The key is the required plugin module key, which must be unique within the plugin.
• The name is the required display name for the plugin.
• The class is the required class name for the renderer component implementation.
• The weight number is required, and determines the order in which renderer component plugins are
run over the wiki markup. Components are run from lowest to highest weights
• com.atlassian.renderer.v2.components.RendererComponent
• com.atlassian.renderer.v2.plugin.RendererComponentFactory
This allows you to provide either a component directly, or a factory that can be used to instantiate more
complex components. If you are using a factory, you can provide arbitrary parameters that will be passed
to the factory when the component is instantiated:
These parameters will be passed into the factory's instantiate method as a Map<String, String>.
Availability
RPC plugins allow you to deploy arbitrary SOAP or XML-RPC services within Confluence. These services
may be completely independent of Confluence, or may take advantage of the Confluence APIs to provide
a remote, programmatic interface to the Confluence server. Confluence's packaged remote API is
implemented entirely as a plugin.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
• The Remote API packaged with Confluence is documented at Remote API Specification
XML-RPC Plugins
Here is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file containing a single XML-RPC service:
• the class attribute defines the class that will be servicing XML-RPC requests. One instance of this
class will be instantiated, and all of its public methods will be made available remotely. The instance
is autowired from the Spring context.
• the service-path attribute is the method-prefix that is used to determine which XML-RPC method
calls are routed to this plugin.
Confluence listens for XML-RPC requests at a single end-point. If your server is deployed at http://
www.example.com then all XML-RPC requests must be made to http://www.example.com/rpc/xmlrpc.
As such, the service-path is used to distinguish which plugin each request is directed at. If your RPC
implementing class has a method provideGreeting(), and a service-prefix of helloworld, then the
XML-RPC method call will be helloworld.provideGreeting().
XML-RPC Interfaces
• all method parameters in the class you have deployed must take as arguments, and return as
values only the "XML-RPC-friendly types" listed below
• null is not a valid XML-RPC type, so you must never send null as an argument, or return null as
a value
• void is not a valid XML-RPC return type, so all methods exposed via XML-RPC must return
some value
Valid types for use as arguments in methods exposed via XML-RPC, or as return values from XML-RPC
methods are:
• int
• boolean
The object wrappers for the primitive types (java.lang.Integer, java.lang.Boolean, etc) may be used
as return values, but not as method arguments. For more information, see: http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/
types.html
SOAP Plugins
Here is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file containing a single SOAP service:
• the class attribute defines the class that will be servicing SOAP requests. One instance of this class
is instantiated and autowired from the Spring context.
• the service-path element defines the SOAP service-path for this plugin, and where its WSDL file will
be located.
• the published-interface element defines a Java interface that will be exposed via the SOAP service.
The class defined in the class attribute must implement this interface.
Confluence listens for SOAP requests at a single end-point. If your server is deployed at http://
www.example.com then all XML-RPC requests must be made to http://www.example.com/rpc/soap. The
preferred method for calling a SOAP service on Confluence is by parsing the WSDL file that is generated
automatically for any deployed SOAP plugin. If your plugin has a service-path of helloworld, its WSDL
file will be available at http://www.example.com/rpc/soap/helloworld.wsdl
RPC Authentication
Confluence supplies a very simple, token-based authentication service for its remote API. Users log
in over the remote interface using a login(username, password) method, and are supplied with a
String token. This String token is then supplied as the first argument of any subsequent remote call, to
authenticate the user with their previous login. More information about this protocol can be found in the
Remote API Specification documentation.
Any RPC plugin can take advantage of the authentication service. To do so you must make some changes
to your remote service objects, and to the configuration.
Here is an atlassian-plugin.xml containing SOAP and XML-RPC services that require authentication:
<rpc-soap key="helloworldsecure-soap"
name="Secure Hello World SOAP"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.extra.helloworldrpc.HelloWorldSecureImpl">
<description>An example SOAP service that requires a login</description>
<service-name>HelloWorldPublic</service-name>
<service-path>helloworld-secure</service-path>
<published-interface>com.atlassian.confluence.extra.helloworldrpc.HelloWorldSecure</
published-interface>
<authenticate>true</authenticate>
</rpc-soap>
...
</atlassian-plugin>
An authenticated XML-RPC service requires an additional published-interface element that behaves like
the published-interface element in the SOAP plugin: you must supply a Java Interface to represent which
methods of your plugin class are being exposed remotely. The class represented by the class attribute
must implement this interface.
There are two changes you have to make to your remote service objects (and their published interfaces)
to allow them to take advantage of authentication:
1. You must implement the String login(String username, String password) and boolean
logout(String token) methods in com.atlassian.confluence.rpc.SecureRpc. However, since
these methods will be intercepted by the Confluence RPC framework, they will never actually be
called on your object. As such, you can leave the implementations empty.
2. All methods in your published interface must have an initial argument that is a String (the
authentication token). This token will also be intercepted by the Confluence RPC framework. Your
code must not rely on this token having any value by the time the method is called on your plugin.
If you are providing an authenticated service, the logged-in User will be available to you from
com.atlassian.confluence.user.AuthenticatedUserThreadLocal.getUser()
If anonymous RPC is enabled for your server, the logged-in user may be null
Hibernate Session
If you use the Confluence API within your plugin you will probably need to create a Hibernate session,
and start a transaction. Getting an error like: net.sf.hibernate.HibernateException: Could not
initialize proxy - the owning Session was closed is one indication.
The class which implements your service needs to delegate each call to another object, which will be
supplied when the HelloWorld instance is autowired.
HelloWorldDelegator contains the actual implementation of your service. It implements the same
interface as HelloWorld, i.e. HelloWorldPublic. It is declared as a Spring bean, wrapped in a transaction:
<spring key="helloWorldDelegator"
class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean">
<property name="transactionManager">
<ref local="transactionManager"/>
</property>
<property name="target">
<ref local="helloWorldDelegatorTarget"/>
</property>
<property name="transactionAttributes">
<props>
<prop key="*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
</props>
</property>
<property name="proxyInterfaces">
<value>com.atlassian.confluence.extra.helloworldrpc.HelloWorldPublic</value>
</property>
<property name="postInterceptors">
<list>
<ref local="profilingInterceptor"/>
</list>
</property>
</spring>
Example
Example XML-RPC and SOAP plugins are available in the Confluence distribution under plugins/
helloworldrpc.
It can also be found here
The full source to the Confluence remote API plugin can be found in the Confluence distribution under
plugins/confluencerpc. The Confluence Remote API uses a mixture of RPC plugins andComponent
Plugins, along with a simple mechanism to serialize Java objects into an XML-RPC compatible struct, to
serve the same API over both SOAP and XML-RPC. We strongly recommend you use a similar mechanism
to provide both RPC APIs.
Servlet plugin modules enable you to deploy Java servlets as a part of your plugins.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
For example, if you specify a url-pattern of /helloworld as above, and your Confluence application
was deployed at http://yourserver/confluence - then you servlet would be accessed at http://yourserver/
confluence/plugins/servlet/helloworld .
Notes
Some information to be aware of when developing or configuring a servlet plugin module:
• Your servlet's init() method will not be called on web application startup, as for a normal servlet.
Instead, this method will be called the first time your servlet is accessed after each time it is
enabled. This means that if you disable a plugin containing a servlet, or a single servlet module, and
re-enable it again init() will be called again.
• Because all servlet modules are deployed beneath a common /plugins/servlet root, be careful
choosing each url-pattern under which your servlet is deployed. It is recommended to use a value
that will always be unique to the world!
Find this example in the /plugins/helloworldservlet directory within your Confluence distribution.
Spring Modules
A Spring module allows you to use standard Spring XML configuration tags.
Ordering of Components
If you declare a Spring component that refers to another Spring component, you must ensure the
referred component is declared first. For example:
Notice that beanB refers to beanA and that beanA is declared before beanB. If you don't do it in this order,
Confluence will complain that beanA does not exist.
Description
The StateAware interface can be implemented by plugin modules which need to know when they are
enabled or disabled.
Implementation
To be notified of enablement/disablement, implement the following in your Macro Plugins, Event Listener
Plugins or Component Plugins:
Call Sequence
These methods are called in the following circumstances:
enabled()
disabled()
Notes
Each method is only called once at each logical enablement/disablement event. Please note that the
module class's constructor is not a reliable place to put initialisation code either, as the classes are often
constructed or destructed more often than they are disabled/enabled. However, once enabled, the same
class will remain in memory until it is disabled.
Known Issues
Supported Module Types
Not all module types have been tested, but the following have the following status:
Themes define a look and feel for Confluence. Confluence ships with several themes that you can use,
such as the dafult theme and or the left-nav theme. Theme plugins, on the other hand, allow you to
create your totally customized look and feel. A theme can be applied to an entire Confluence site or to
individual spaces. Creating a new theme consists of two steps:
1. Creating a theme with decorators and colour schemes, which defines how each page looks.
2. Packaging and installing a Theme Plugin - themes are part of our plugin system.
To install it within Confluence, please read Installing and Configuring Plugins manually.
There are several other themes that you can use as examples to learn from and extend:
• Clickr Theme
• Comment Tab Theme
• Left-nav Theme
We've also prodvided a Confluence Space export for theme developers. You can import this space into
your development Confluence, and check each page to make sure all of the Confluence content looks
good in your new theme.
• Using Decorators
• Using Stylesheets
• Using Colour Schemes
Using Decorators
A decorator defines Confluence page layout. By modifying a decorator file, you can move "Attachments'
tab from the left of the screen to the right or remove it completely. Decorator files are written in the
Velocity templating language and have the VMD extension. You can familiarise yourself with Velocity at
the Velocity Template Overview and decorators in general at the Sitemesh homepage.
Confluence comes bundled with a set of decorator files that you can customize. Instead of having one
decorator file for each screen, we've grouped together similar screens (example: view and edit page
screens) to simplfy editing layouts.
There is some terminology that we use when talking about decorators that should be defined. We've
grouped all the screens in Confluence into major categories which we call contexts. Within each context
are various modes (ways of viewing that particular layout).
The following table summarises how decorators use contexts and modes:
As an example on how to use the table above, say we found the 'Attachments' tab on the view page
screen annoying and wanted to remove it. We could make this layout change in the page.vmd file - where
the 'view' mode is handled (as shown below).
#*
Display page based on mode: currently 'view', 'edit', 'preview-edit', 'info' and 'attachments.
See the individual page templates (viewpage.vm, editpage.vm, etc.) for the setting of the mode
parameter.
*#
## VIEW
#if ($mode == "view")
#elseif ...
When creating your own decorators, it is critical that you preserve the lines #parse ("/pages/
page-breadcrumbs.vm") or #parse ("/breadcrumbs.vm"). These include files pass important
information about the space to other space decorators and hence must be included.
When editing decorator files you will come across a variable called $helper - this is the theme helper
object.
Behaviour Explanation
$helper.domainName displays the base URL of your Confluence instance
on your page. This is useful for constructing links to
your own Confluence pages.
$helper.spaceKey() returns the current space key or null if in a global
context.
$helper.spaceName returns the name of the current space
$helper.renderConfluenceMacro("{create-space- renders a call to a Confluence Macro for the velocity
button}") context
$helper.getText("key.key1") looks up a key in a properties file matching
key.key1=A piece of text and returns the
matching value ("A piece of text")
$helper.action returns the XWork action which processed the
request for the current page.
If you are on a page or space screen you also have access to the actual page and space object by using
$helper.page and $helper.space respectively.
If you want to delve more into what other methods are available in this object, please see our API's for
ThemeHelper.
Velocity macros
Finally, the last thing you need to decipher decorator files is an understanding of macros. A velocity
macro looks like this:
#myVelocityMacro()
In essence, each macro embodies a block of code. We've used these macros to simplify decorator files
and make them easier to modify.
The easiest way to acquaint yourself with the macros is to browse through your macros.vm file, located in
/template/includes/macros.vm (under the base Confluence installation).
Velocity macros are very useful for abstracting out common presentation logic into a function call and for
keeping decorators clean. If you wish to use them for your theme you can either:
Write your own Velocity macros library file, as we've done with macros.vm. If you elect to do this you
must locate the velocity.properties file beneath WEB-INF/classes and tell the Velocity engine where your
library file can be located, relative to the base installation of Confluence.
velocimacro.library = template/includes/macros.vm
Inline velocity macros, when loaded once, can be called from anywhere. See decorators/mail.vmd for
examples of inline decorators.
Using Stylesheets
Stylesheets can be defined for a theme and they will automatically be included by Confluence when
pages are displayed with your theme. You simply need to add a resource of type download to your theme
module. Please note that the resource name must end with .css for it to be automatically included by
Confluence.
Now, in the HTML header of any page using your theme, a link tag to your theme stylesheets will be
created by Confluence. If you have a look at the source of combined.css, it will contain imports to all
your theme stylesheets.
<html>
<head>
...
<link type="text/css" href="/confluence/s/.../_/styles/combined.css?spaceKey=FOO"
rel="stylesheet">
</head>
...
</html>
Theme stylesheets are included after all the default Confluence styles and colour schemes. This is to
ensure that your theme styles can override and take precedence over the base styles provided by
Confluence.
You may choose to respect these user configured colour schemes in your theme or ignore them
completely by overriding them in your theme stylesheets. If you would like to respect the configured
colour schemes for your new UI elements, you should specify a velocity stylesheet resource in your
theme module.
Please note that the resource name must end with .vm for it to be automatically rendered as a velocity
template by Confluence. This velocity stylesheet will essentially contain css for colours with references to
the colour scheme bean (which is available to you via the action). For example:
\#breadcrumbs a {
color: $action.colorScheme.linkColor;
}
#myNewElement {
color: $action.colorScheme.headingTextColor;
}
.myNewElementClass {
border-color: $action.colorScheme.borderColor;
}
...
As the velocity stylesheet is rendered as a velocity template, you will need to escape any #ids (e.g.
breadcrumbs) that match velocity macro names.
Additionally, you may choose to provide your theme with a pre-defined colour scheme (which users will
be able to select under Space Administration). This pre-defined colour scheme will take precedence if no
...
The available colours correspond to those that you would configure under Space Administration > Colour
Scheme:
A theme can contain an optional colour-scheme element that defines which colour-scheme module this
theme will use, and any number of layout elements that define which layouts should be applied in this
theme. Refer to these modules by their module complete key.
It is possible for a theme to use modules that aren't in the same plugin as the theme. Just keep in mind
that your theme will be messed up if some plugin that the theme depends on is removed.
Plugins are a general topic in Confluence and have other uses than themes. In every case, the central
configuration file, which describes the plugin to Confluence, is named atlassian-plugin.xml .
The structure of an atlassian-plugin.xml file is fairly self-explanatory. In the code segment below you will
find a full example of an atlassian-plugin.xml, which lists
in a way which Confluence can use to override the default theme. In other words, this XML tells
Confluence to look in certain locations for replacement decorators when processing a request.
</atlassian-plugin>
The layout entry must provide an overrides attribute which defines which decorator within Confluence is
being overrridden by the theme.
Importantly, when telling Confluence to override a particular decorator with another one, the location of
the custom decorator is specified; for example:
The location attribute needs to be represented in the jar archive you will use to bundle your theme.
Your decorators should be placed in a directory hierarchy which makes sense to you. The atlassian-
plugin.xml file should be placed at the top level of the directory structure, afterwards the decorators
should be placed in directories which make a meaningful division of what they do. It is your choice as to
how the structure is laid out, each decorator could even be placed alongside atlassian-plugin.xml . The
essential thing is for the location attribute of each decorator to accurately tell Confluence how to load it.
atlassian-plugin.xml
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/global.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/space.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/mail.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/blogpost.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/main.vmd
com/atlassian/confluence/themes/tabless/page.vmd
The themes can be configured via the Configuration link on the Choose Theme page on both the space
and global level.
For example, the Left Navigation Theme allows for the specification of the title of the page which page
should be used for navigation. The XWork module allows for developing complex configurations for
themes, which can be saved in a config file.
Note that two new parameters have been specified in the above xml.
• space-config-path points to the action connected with the space theme configuration.
• global-config-path points to the action connected with the global theme configuration.
As themes can be specified either on a global or space level, different configuration actions can be
implemented for each level. If there is no need for configuration on a level, simply don't specify the config
path.
XWork Actions
</xwork>
• configuretheme defines the velocity file used to display the input view.
• doconfiguretheme defines the action to redirect to after the configuration was successful.
Note that the config-path parameters specified above matches the namespace plus the name of the
action.
For example, given the above atlassian-plugin.xml, the configuretheme action would be accessed at
http://yourserver/confluence/themes/dinosaurs/configuretheme.action
.
The namespace of the global action has to start with /admin. Otherwise the action will not be
decorated by the admin decorator, and the navigation of the admin area will not be visible.
package com.atlassian.confluence.extra.leftnavigation;
import java.io.Serializable;
public class LeftNavSettings implements Serializable
{
private String space;
private String page;
This is a simple how-to that shows the steps to upgrade your plugin for editable comments.
Modify sharedcomments.vmd
Making your themes compatible with editable comment only requires modifying sharedcomments.vmd.
There are 3 parts to update. A good example of this is the Clickr Theme.
First to enable editable comment you will need to give access to the edit function.
Adding the link is as simple as adding the following piece of code near your existing 'Permalink' and
'Remove Comment' links:
Editing a comment happens inline. Therefore the editor must be added when rendering the comment
being edited as follow:
This step is optional but it always nice for user to knwo when a comment has been updated and by who.
The following piece of code gets the necessary information.
#if ( $action.helper.shouldRenderCommentAsUpdated($comment) )
#if ( $comment.creatorName == $comment.lastModifierName )
$action.getText("comment.updated.by.author", ["#usernameLink ($comment.lastModifierName)",
$action.dateFormatter.formatDateTime( $comment.lastModificationDate )])
The shouldRenderCommentAsUpdated method is a convenience method that checks whether the comment
has been updated by its creator more than 10 minutes after being created. It exists so that comments
will not get cluttered with useless information because of a quick fix made shortly after the comment is
posted. One can adjust the time frame by passing a number of seconds as the second argument to this
method.
Finally, if the updater of the comment is different to the original author of the comment, his name is
displayed.
Trigger plugin modules enable you to schedule when your Job Plugins are scheduled to run Confluence.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
Here is an example atlassian-plugin.xml fragment containing a Job with it's corresponding Trigger
module using a cron-style expression (for reference, this expression will execute the job with key 'myJob'
every minute):
• the name attribute represents how this component will be referred to in the Confluence interface.
• the key attribute represents the internal, system name for your Trigger.
• the class attribute represents the class of the Job to be created. The class must have a no-argument
constructor, or it will not be able to be instantiated by Confluence.
For more details on the cron expressions, see the Quartz documentation for CronTrigger.
Here is another example, this time using a simple trigger that repeats every 360000 seconds (1 hour)
and will only repeat 5 times:
...
<trigger key="myTrigger" name="My Trigger">
<job key="myJob" />
<schedule repeat-interval="360000" repeat-count="5" />
</trigger>
...
You can create user macros without writing a plugin through the User Macros administration menu.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
User macros installed by plugin modules do not appear in the user macro section of the
administrative console, and are not editable from within the user interface. They appear just as
normal plugin modules in the plugin interface.
Macro plugin modules are configured entirely inside the atlassian-plugin.xml file, as follows:
• The <template> section is required, and defines the velocity template that will be used to render
the macro
• All the velocity variables available in User Macros are available in user macro plugin modules
• The name and key of the macro must be specified the same as Macro Plugins
• No class attribute is required
• The attributes of the <user-macro> element match the corresponding configuration for user
macros:
Available Attributes
Velocity Context plugin modules are available in Confluence 1.4 and later
Velocity Context plugin modules enable you to add components to Confluence's velocity context, making
those components available in templates rendered from decorators, themes, XWork actions or macros.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
The objects are autowired by Spring before being added to the context.
• the name attribute represents how this component will be referred to in the Confluence interface.
• the key attribute represents the internal, system name for your component.
• the context-key attribute represents the variable that will be created in Velocity for this item. So if
you set a context-key of myVelocityHelper, the object will be available as $myVelocityHelper in
Velocity templates
• the class attribute represents the class of the component to be created. The class must have a no-
argument constructor, or it will not be able to be instantiated by Confluence.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
• web-item modules define links that are to be displayed in the UI at a particular location
• web-section modules define a collection of links to be displayed together
Web items or web sections (referred to collectively as 'web fragments') may be displayed in a number
of different ways, depending on the location of the fragment and the theme under which it is being
displayed.
Locations
In a number of places in the Confluence UI, there are lists of links representing operations relevant to the
content being viewed. These are the locations that you can customise:
• Those locations marked as being 'themeable' can be moved around, reformatted or omitted by
Theme Plugins. The descriptions above refer to where they are located in the default theme.
• Locations marked as being 'sectioned' require that web items be grouped under web sections. In
sectioned locations, web items that are not placed under a section will not be displayed.
• It is possible for themes to make any themeable locations sectioned, even when the default theme
doesn't. We do not recommend this, as it would mean any plugin taking advantage of this would
only be compatible with a particular theme.
Theme Compatibility
Themes based on Confluence versions prior to 2.2 will continue to function with Confluence
2.2, but will not be able to display any custom Web UI fragments until they are updated.
You may choose to create your own web sections or add to Confluence's predefined ones (if it makes
logical sense to). Here is a sample atlassian-plugin.xml fragment for a web-section:
The diagrams below illustrate the new web sections for the drop down menus.
• The key is the required plugin module key, which must be unique within the plugin. It is also used in
the UI for determining which module is currently being displayed.
• The name is a required displayable name for the module, only used in the plugin administrative UI
• The section is the required location into which this web item should be placed. For non-sectioned
locations, this is just the location key. For sectioned locations it is the location key, followed by a
slash ('/'), and the name of the web section in which it should appear
• The weight is required , and determines the order in which web items appear. Items are displayed
top to bottom or left to right in order of ascending weight. (i.e. the 'lightest' weight is displayed first,
the 'heaviest' weights sink to the bottom)
• The label element is required, and is the i18n key that will be used to look up the textual
representation and mouse-over text of the link.
• The link element is required, and defines where the web item should link to. The contents of the
link element will be rendered using Velocity, allowing you to put dynamic content in links. For more
complex examples of links, see below.
• The icon element is optional, and defines an icon to display with or as the link. Note: In some cases
the icon element seems to be required. Try adding it if your web section is not displaying properly.
• The condition element is optional, and defines a condition that must be satisfied for the web item to
be displayed. If you want to 'invert' a condition, add an attribute 'invert="true"' to it. The web item
will then be displayed if the condition returns false (not true).
Label elements
<label key="navlink.attachments">
<param name="param0">$!helper.page.title</param>
<param name="param1">$!helper.numberOfAttachments</param>
</label>
• The parameters allow you to insert values into the label using Java's MessageFormat syntax.
• Parameter names must start with param and will be mapped in alphabetical order to the
substitutions in the format string.
• Parameter values are rendered using Velocity, allowing you to include dynamic content
Link elements
• The linkId is optional, and provides an XML id for the link being generated.
• The accessKey is optional and provides an access key for the link being generated. The contents of
this element will be rendered using Velocity, allowing you to generate an access key dynamically.
There is no standard way for Confluence to display a web item, so depending on where the
item is being displayed, some information in the configuration may be ignored. For example
themes may choose not to display the icon, or may choose to only display the icon. Similarly,
the linkId and accessKey are only used in some locations.
Condition elements
Condition elements must contain a class attribute with the fully-qualified name of a Java class. The
referenced class:
Condition elements can take optional parameters. These parameters will be passed in to the Condition's
init() method as a Map of String key/value pairs after autowiring, but before any condition checks are
performed. For example:
<condition
class="com.atlassian.confluence.plugin.descriptor.web.conditions.PagePermissionCondition">
<param name="permission">edit</param>
</condition>
Multiple condition elements can be included in a single web item. If a web item contains multiple
conditions, all conditions must be satisfied for the web item to be displayed.
To invert a condition, add the attribute 'invert="true"' to the condition element. This is useful where you
want to show the section if a certain condition is not satisfied.
• key, name, weight, label and condition are all the same as web-item
• location is required, and serves the same purpose as section in web-item, except that a section can
not be contained within another section.
• Web sections do not have links or icons.
Q and A
How do I make use of sections or web items in my own themes?
Take a look at how they are used in the default themes, you should be able to get a good idea of the
necessary code. For example, here is some sample code from space.vmd
Yes. Just pick a new key for the location or section parameters of your plugin modules. By convention,
you should probably use the standard 'inverted domain name' prefix so as not to clash with anyone else's
plugins. We reserve all system.* locations for Confluence's core use.
Once again, however, we don't recommend this as you end up with plugins that are only useful in your
own themes. Try to at least provide an alternative set of UI modules for people who are using other
themes and still want to access the same functionality. You could, for example, define alternative UI
plugin modules that placed your functions in Confluence's standard locations, but have a <condition>
that disabled them in favour of your custom locations if your theme was installed.
The best way is to look at the .vm file of one of the existing items in that location. You are most
interested in the #applyDecorator directive being called from that file. For example viewpage.vm, which
defines the "View" tab in the system.page location has the following #applyDecorator directive:
#applyDecorator("root")
#decoratorParam("helper" $action.helper)
#decoratorParam("mode" "view")
#decoratorParam("context" "page")
#end
If you were writing a plugin that was destined to be added as another item in the page tabs, your Velocity
file for that action would also have to have a similar decorator directive around it:
#applyDecorator("root")
#decoratorParam("helper" $action.helper)
#decoratorParam("mode" "myPluginKey")
#decoratorParam("context" "page")
#end
Note that you should put you Web Item's plugin key as the "mode". This way, Confluence will make sure
that the correct tab is highlighted as the active tab when people are viewing your action.
In some cases, such as the browse space tabs, you may have to use "context" instead of "mode"
My Web UI link isn't appearing when I use the Adaptavist Theme Builder plugin - why?
Theme Builder uses completely customisable navigation and as such can't automatically display Web UI
links because this would likely lead to duplication of many other, more common links.
You can, however use the {menulink} macro to insert any Web UI link using the following notation:
{menulink:webui|location=XXXX|key=YYYY}webui link{menulink}
Theme Builder 2.0.8 and above now supports a growing number of third party plugins as standard -
for more information see the online documentation. If you have a publicly available plugin and want an
inbuilt menulink locaiton for it, please contact Adaptavist.
This set of pages describes the Workflow Plugin. This is a work in progress and is useful as:
• An example of a reasonably complicated plugin, using macros, events and xwork actions which
stores state as page properties and interacts with content entity versions and permissions.
• A starting point for discussion of what plugin-based workflow in Confluence might look like. A
workflow implementation which made core Confluence changes might look different.
The workflow plugin as released in 1.4.2 does not have all the features described. It will be updated
in the first 1.5DP release.
We're interested in getting feedback – how useful does the workflow model as described seem to you?
This page describes a prototype Workflow Plugin for Confluence. After reading it you should be able to
create a workflow description and use it to manage a set of pages in Confluence.
The feature that this does not provide is the ability of different users to see different versions of a page.
This is a problem for approval workflows, where we want an edit to remain invisible to 'ordinary' users
until it has been approved.
Plugin Information
You will need Java and Groovy development skills to implement this plugin. This is currently provided
'as-is' without Atlassian technical support, but you can search for or post questions relating to it in the
Developer Forums. Alternatively, the Atlassian partner Saikore now offers paid support.
Workflow Concepts
This section describes the concepts used in building the Workflow Plugin.
Workflow Client
This is the entity whose life cycle is managed by the workflow plugin. In this implementation a client
is a Confluence page. The client is responsible for remembering which workflow it is taking part in,
remembering its workflow state, and changing this state when told to by the workflow system. A client
may (and should) have other state information which is not visible to the workflow system, for instance
the contents of a Confluence page are not managed by the workflow system at all.
Workflow Type
This is the set of data which defines a workflow. A workflow type is assembled from collections of States,
Operations, Triggers and Actions.
Workflow State
At any time a Workflow Client is in one (and only one) State. This state determines which Operations are
available to be performed on the client.
Operation
An Operation may be requested by the user on a Workflow Client. An Operation itself doesn't change any
state, either in the workflow system or in the Workflow Client, but simply sends a signal to the Workflow
Type that this Operation has been requested on that particular Workflow Client. It is just a description
meaningful to a user, associated with a code meaningful to the Workflow Type, together with security
rules to determine when the Operation can be performed. The signals sent to the Workflow Type may
cause one or more Triggers to fire. Whether an Operation is available on a particular Client depends on
the State of the client and the group membership of the current user. In addition to Operations defined in
a particular Workflow Type, all Workflow Types recognize page edit and page view operations.
Trigger
A Trigger listens for Operations, and either fires or does not fire, depending on the Operation, its internal
state (if any – many simple triggers are stateless) and its implementation. When a Trigger fires it tells the
set of Actions it contains to execute.
Action
From you Confluence install directory, go to plugins/workflow or acccess from the Confluence source
under src/etc/plugins/workflow. Build the plugin into a JAR file.
Decide what groups will be involved in the workflow, create them and assign appropriate users to them.
Grant suitable permissions to the space.
Create a WorkflowType
One way to do this on a test basis is to put your workflow type in a {script} macro. The script macro can
be downloaded from here. You'll need to visit the page after restarting the server.
The example below uses a Groovy script – you could just as well use Beanshell, Jython or JRuby.
{script:groovy}
import com.atlassian.confluence.extra.workflow.*;
import com.atlassian.confluence.core.ContentPermission;
State requested = new State("test", "In Progress", "In Progress");
State readyToReview = new State("test", "Ready for review", "Ready for review");
State accepted = new State("test", "Accepted", "Accepted");
State rejected = new State("test", "Rejected", "Rejected");
def states = [DEV:requested, readyToReview, accepted, rejected];
def ops = [
new DefaultOperation([DEV:requested, rejected], [DEV:"writer"], "completed", "Submit for Review"),
new DefaultOperation([DEV:readyToReview],[DEV:"reviewer"], "accept", "Accept"),
new DefaultOperation([DEV:readyToReview],[DEV:"reviewer"], "reject", "Reject"),
];
def groups = [DEV:"writer", "reviewer", "confluence-administrator"];
def triggers = [
Put a {workflowtype:yourWorkflowTypeName} macro after your script, so you can see that it is properly
creating the WorkflowType.
To make a page take part in the workflow you have just created, add the {workflow:workflowTypeName}
macro to the page and hit Update.
You'll get a workflow box with the option 'Start Workflow'. Select this and the page will refresh. The
workflow box will now indicate that the page is in the starting state for that workflow type.
You can use the {workflowTasks} macro to display a list of all workflow pages which are descendants of
the current page. Any task which the viewing user can perform an action on will be starred.
To Do
• Users may be members of an 'author' group which is allowed to edit pages, an 'approver' group
which is allowed to approve edited pages, or both groups (in which case they can't approve their
own changes) or neither (in which case they are just consumers of the content).
• When an 'author' edits a page, the page goes into a 'editing in progress' state.
• When an author views an 'editing in progress' page, they are presented with an option to submit the
page for review. This puts the page into the 'waiting for approval' state.
• Members of the approver group have access to a page in confluence which automatically lists the
pages waiting for approval.
• When an 'approver' visits a 'waiting for approval' page, they are presented with options to accept or
reject the changes. If they accept the changes, the page goes to the 'accepted' state, where pages
spend most of their life, otherwise it goes to the 'rejected' state.
• Members of the 'author' group have access to a page in Confluence where they can see all the pages
which they edited which have been rejected, or are waiting for approval. They don't see pages other
authors have edited.
• When an author visits a page in the 'rejected' or 'waiting for approval' state, they have the option
of withdrawing the change, which moves the page to the accepted state, and rolls back to the most
recent approved version.
• When an author edits a page in the rejected state, it moves to the 'editing in progress' state.
But we probably also want to show consumers the most recently approved version of a page, not the one
currently under review. Without core Confluence changes, the best we can do is show users a banner
which says "This content is being reviewed. The most recent approved content is here".
XWork plugin modules enable you to deploy XWork / WebWork actions and views as a part of your
plugins.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
<action name="livesearch"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.extra.livesearch.LiveSearchAction">
<result name="success" type="velocity">
/templates/extra/livesearch/livesearchaction.vm
</result>
</action>
</package>
</xwork>
</atlassian-plugin>
Writing an Action
For information on how to write a WebWork action, please consult the WebWork documentation.
Other action base-classes can be found within Confluence, but we recommend you don't use them - the
hierarchy of action classes in Confluence is over-complicated, and likely to be simplified in the future in a
way that will break your plugins.
For example, given the above atlassian-plugin.xml, the livesearch action would be accessed at
http://yourserver/confluence/plugins/livesearch/livesearch.action.
• Your packages should almost always extend the default Confluence package. It is useful to be
aware of what this provides to you in the way of interceptors and result types.
• You can give your packages any namespace you like, but we recommend using /plugins/unique/
value - that is prefixing plugin packages with /plugins and then adding a string globally unique
to your plugin. The only name you can't use is servlet as the /plugins/servlet URL pattern is
reserved for Servlet Plugins.
• Views must be bundled in the JAR file in order to be used by your actions. This almost always means
using Velocity views.
• It is useful to be aware of the actions and features already bundled with Confluence, for example
your actions will all be auto-wired by Spring (see Accessing Confluence Components From Plugin
Modules) and your actions can use useful interfaces like PageAware and SpaceAware to reduce the
amount of work they need to do.
Example
The LiveSearch example is a neat example of an Ajax-style Confluence plugin which uses a bundled
XWork module to do it's work:
Find this example in the /plugins/macros/livesearch directory within your Confluence distribution.
Good style for web applications requires that Javascript and CSS for web pages are kept separate to the
HTML they enhance. Confluence itself is moving towards this model, and the tools that Confluence uses to
do this are also available to plugin developers.
If are developing a theme plugin and would like to include css resources, see Theme Stylesheets
instead.
For each resource, the location of the resource should match the path to the resource in your plugin JAR
file. For example, 'widgets.js' in the above plugin JAR would be at /js/widgets.js. Resource paths are
namespaced to your plugin, so they can't conflict with resources in other plugins with the same location
(unlike say i18n or Velocity resources). However, you may find it convenient to use a path name which is
specific to your plugin to be consistent with these other types.
Then, in a Velocity template that requires that Javascript file, you use the #requireResource macro, with
the plugin key followed by a colon and the key of the web-resource:
#requireResource("com.example.confluence.plugin.special:mechanical-parts")
In the HTML header of any page containing that Velocity template, all resources included in the web-
resource plugin will be written out as script or link tags to include the relevant resource:
<html>
<head>
<!-- ... -->
<script type="text/javascript" src="/s/.../_/download/
com.example.confluence.plugin.special:mechanical-parts/widgets.js"></script>
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" src="/s/.../_/download/
com.example.confluence.plugin.special:mechanical-parts/spockets.css">
<!-- ... -->
</head>
</html>
Only one instance of each script or stylesheet will be included, and they will appear in the order they are
requested in the Velocity rendering process.
The rich text editor and preview views do not currently use dynamic stylesheets provided by a macro
rendered in this way.
Confluence currently includes several Javascript libraries which can be used by plugins. The versions of
these libraries are subject to change, but only across major versions of Confluence.
In the Confluence source code, these libraries are included in a plugin XML file called web-
resources.xml.
To include one of these libraries in all pages in which your Velocity template appear, simply use the
#requireResource macro as above. For example, if your macro requires Scriptaculous, add the following
to its Velocity template:
#requireResource("confluence.web.resources:scriptaculous")
Note: Confluence 2.8 includes a version of Yahoo UI, also called YUI. However, this will be removed in
Confluence 2.9 and should not be used by plugin developers.
The recommended way to load scripts when the page is ready, known as 'on-DOM-ready', is to use the
Atlassian Javascript (AJS) abstraction. This avoid depending on a particular Javascript library which may
not remain in Confluence.
AJS.toInit(function () {
// ... your initialisation code here
});
This has the additional benefit of ensuring any functions or variables you declare here are not in the
global scope, which is important for best interoperability with other plugins in Confluence.
We recommend you separate your markup, styles and Javascript when developing a Confluence plugin,
according to the design principles of progressive enhancement. To assist with this, there are a few hooks
in AJS and in Confluence in general to make this easier.
You can have your Javascript access the localised text without embedding it by using AJS.params:
if (confirm(AJS.params.deleteCommentConfirmMessage)) {
// ...
}
Usually, you can use relative paths in stylesheets and Javascript to avoid the need for knowing the
context path. However, Confluence makes this available through a meta tag in the header which looks like
this:
With jQuery, or even normal Javascript, it is quite easy to retrieve this for use in scripts:
// normal JS
document.getElementById("confluence-context-path").content
// jQuery
$("#confluence-context-path").attr("content")
More information
Couldn't you do this already? What's changed in Confluence 2.8?
Since Confluence 2.6, you've been able to use #includeJavascript, which puts the script tag inline,
exactly where that Velocity macro appears. You've also always been able to include inline scripts or styles
in your macros. However, there are a couple of problems with this that we've solved in 2.8:
1. The Javascript might override other script already present in the page, including scripts used by
Confluence.
2. Inline Javascript or styles might appear multiple times in the page, wasting bandwidth and
potentially causing conflicts.
Many plugin authors found that including Javascript in their plugins meant the plugin broke in some
places, such as in the preview window, if two copies of the macro were on the same page.
By using the new #requireResource, you're guaranteed to only get one instance of the script appearing
on a page, and it will be cached by browsers until your plugin is upgraded.
You can achieve the same result in Java via the WebResourceManager. Use the same method as described
above for Velocity: webResourceManager.requireResource(String). The WebResourceManager is a
bean you can get injected by Spring. Do this within the scope of the request.
In most cases, using Velocity makes more sense, because the declaration of the JS and CSS should be
close to the code which uses it.
RELATED TOPICS
The Velocity template files (files whose names end in .vm) were moved inside the main confluence-
<version>.jar file with the release of Confluence 2.6.0 (i.e. $CONFLUENCE_INSTALL/confluence/
WEB-INF/lib/confluence-2.6.jar in version 2.6). If you are unfamiliar with editing the contents of
a .jar file, you may find these instructions useful.
Alternatively Java Servlet Technology allows you to use an unpacked version of the desired file in
the WEB_INF/classes directory. Make sure you reproduce the exact directory (package) structure.
The default PDF page size is A4 (210mm x 297mm or 8.27in x 11.7in). Modify the file under your
Confluence install directory:
.../confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/importexport/common_fop.vm
To change the page size for PDF export, page-width and page-height parameters have to be edited in the
above mentioned file. Locate the line
• page-width="21.59cm"
• page-height="27.94cm"
Optionally you can modify the margins. To give the page a half-inch margin all around:
• margin-right="1.27cm"
• margin-left="1.27cm"
• margin-bottom="1.27cm"
• margin-top="1.27cm"
Landscape orientation
By default the page orientation for PDF export is set to "Portrait" with page-width="21cm" and page-
height="29.7cm". To change the orientation to Landscape, swap the page-width and page-height
measurement values as shown below:
Always stop Confluence before editing a Velocity macro file. Users who are stuck can obtain technical
assistance by posting the modified Velocity file to the Confluence Developer Forum.
.../confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/importexport/common_header_fop.vm
.../confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/importexport/common_footer_fop.vm
.../confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/importexport/common_fop.vm
.../confluence/WEB-INF/classes/com/atlassian/confluence/pages/Page.pdfexport.vm
• The above example is for Unix-based systems, so Windows users should use back-slashes instead
forward-slashes
• An example Windows install directory is C:\confluence-2.2.9-std
• An example Linux install directory is /opt/confluence-2.2.9/
Text
Inserting the example XSL-FO tag below into the relevant Velocity macro file will output a new line with
This text is printed in plain text.
Images
There are two steps involved in adding images to the header and the footer:
1. You need to modify common_fop.vm and adjust the margins, and sizes of the two regions (region-
before and region-after) to fit in the image.
<fo:region-before extent="1cm"/>
<fo:region-after extent="1cm"/>
In the example above, change the "1cm" value to allow yourself as much space as you need for your
customization.
2. Insert the example XSL-FO tag below into the relevant Velocity macro file to embed the local image
c:\images\operahouse.png into the PDF.
You will need to convert the file location into a "file URI" before adding it the macro file.
For Windows systems, the method is to replace all back-slashes in the local path with forward-
slashes and prefix the result with file:///
For UNIX-based systems prefix the path with file:// eg /tmp/image.png becomes file:///tmp/
image.png
There is a good explanation for this format in Windows here and if you're really keen (or having
problems) a fuller description is here.
<fo:block>
<fo:external-graphic
width="auto" height="auto"
src="file:///c:/images/operahouse.png" />
</fo:block>
This title appears once on the first page of the PDF. An example title is
To modify the page title, go to your Confluence install directory and modify the Velocity macro file
...\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\pages\Page.pdfexport.vm
If you want the modification of the page title to take into effect for space export, go to your Confluence
install directory and modify the Velocity macro file
...\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\spaces\Space.pdfexport.vm
By default, no page header is printed with PDF exports. To add one, go to your Confluence install
directory and modify the Velocity macro file
...\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\importexport\common_header_fop.vm
<fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-before">
</fo:static-content>
If you can't see your banner or image, update the value of <fo:region-before extent="1cm"/> in
the common_fop.vm template to 4 or 5 cm according to the size of your banner or image. Please see
CONF-9082 for a feature request on increasing the default value.
<fo:layout-master-set>
<fo:simple-page-master margin-right="2cm" margin-left="2cm" margin-bottom="1cm" margin-
top="1cm" page-width="21cm" page-height="29.7cm" master-name="all-pages">
<fo:region-body margin-bottom="1.5cm" margin-top="1.5cm"/>
<fo:region-before extent="4cm"/>
<fo:region-after extent="1cm"/>
</fo:simple-page-master>
</fo:layout-master-set>
To modify the footer, go to your Confluence install directory and modify the Velocity macro file
...\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\importexport\common_footer_fop.vm
<fo:block>Created on $generalUtil.formatDateTime($exportDate)</fo:block>
<fo:block>Copyright Altassian Software</fo:block>
To produce a footer with a ruler on top and page number on right and some copy right content on bottom
then you can use the sample common_footer_fop.vm template below
<fo:static-content flow-name="xsl-region-after">
<fo:block>
<fo:leader leader-pattern="rule" leader-length="100%"/>
</fo:block>
<fo:table width="100%" table-layout="fixed" font-family="serif" font-size="10pt">
<fo:table-column column-width="14cm"/>
<fo:table-column column-width="3cm"/>
<fo:table-body>
<fo:table-row>
<fo:table-cell color="grey">
<fo:block>Document generated by Confluence on
$dateFormatter.formatDateTime($exportDate)</fo:block>
<fo:block>Created on
$generalUtil.formatDateTime($exportDate)</fo:block>
<fo:block>Copyright Altassian Software</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell color="grey">
<fo:block text-align="end">Page <fo:page-number/></
fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
</fo:table-row>
</fo:table-body>
</fo:table>
</fo:static-content>
Overview
Confluence exports a Confluence page as a Microsoft Word document by:
The wrapper is generated using a Velocity macro to provide CSS style information specific to MS Word
exports.
Modifying Content
Please do not attempt to modify the output without some experience in CSS and HTML markup. You may
also need to review Velocity template language.
Before modifying any styles, you should always take a backup of both any files you are modifying and
your entire Confluence install directory. If you require assistance with your customisation attempt, you
should post your modified files along with a technical description to our Confluence Developer Forum.
Important Files
The formatting is defined using the CSS styles in main Confluence stylesheet and overridden by any
styles in the Word export wrapper.
Main Stylesheet
This file formats the default appearance of all Confluence content. Changes to this document will be
shown when viewing a page from within Confluence, as well as in HTML or MS Word exports. You should
avoid changing this document unless you wish a style to be changed throughout Confluence. The file is
located under the Confluence install directory:
...\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\styles\site-css.vm
Export Wrapper
This file overrides the main Confluence stylesheet, so styles outlined in this file will be specific to MS Word
exports. It set the font and style for body text, some macro and grids, and a default background colour.
The file is located under the Confluence install directory:
...\confluence\pages\exportword.vm
If the CSS tag already exists in the Word export wrapper, you can modify it directly. If the CSS tag is
defined by the main stylesheet, copy it into the export wrapper as a new entry in the <style> element
and update it there:
1. Identify its CSS tag in the main stylesheet. You may need to use trial and error to identify which
cascading property is relevant
2. Transfer the tag into the Word export wrapper so that it overrides the main stylesheet
3. Modify the tag style in the wrapper
Common Modifications
You can easily set the body font or background colour in the export wrapper.
This is a quick guide to getting off the ground when starting a new plugin for Confluence.
The Guide
Extra Information
• Development Tips
• Userinfo Plugin Tutorial
Here are some tips for debugging and optimising the Confluence plugin development proccess.
• Disable Velocity Caching — it is often useful to disable the caching of the velocity templates so that
you don't have to restart the server to see velocity changes
• Enabling Developer Mode — Confluence's {color:blue}Developer Mode{color} is a system property
setting that tells Confluence to enable various debugging features
When you are developing for Confluence, it is often useful to disable the caching of the velocity templates
so that you don't have to restart the server to see velocity changes.
Perform the following modifications before starting the server, or restart it afterwards:
This will allow even the macro library (macros.vm) to reload automatically.
Confluence's Developer Mode is a system property setting that tells Confluence to enable various
debugging features that are not otherwise exposed to users. To enable Developer Mode, you should start
Confluence with the following system property set.
-Dconfluence.devmode=true
If you are writing a Confluence extension and want to check if Developer Mode is active, you can call
ConfluenceActionSupport#isDevMode() if you have an action available ($action.devMode in Velocity
templates), or Boolean.getBoolean(ConfluenceActionSupport.DEVMODE) if you don't.
Confluence 2.0
• The System Information page and 500 error page will contain an entry noting that Developer Mode
is enabled
• The "view as HTML" button will be made available in the WYSIWYG rich-text editor
This tutorial is being written during the course of the development of a Confluence plugin. It is a
demonstration of a number of techniques and tips useful to plugin development, and also of how all the
various types of Confluence plugin modules can be combined to add new features to the Confluence
application.
The plugin being developed during the course of this tutorial is not just a toy or a random idea that
was thought up to write a guide around, it's actually something that we intend to make use of on the
Atlassian extranet, fulfilling a real requirement of our business.
I'm hoping to add new chapters to the tutorial each week until it development of the plugin is complete.
Requirements
In order to get the most out of this tutorial, you should have:
1. Confluence 2.2 (the plugin makes use of features that were not available in Confluence 2.1 or
earlier)
2. A suitable plugin development environment.
The Plugin
On the Atlassian extranet, which is obviously powered by Confluence, we keep a staff directory. This
directory is really just a single Confluence page with a section for each staff member. Here's mine:
When we started the page, there were only about twenty people in the company. Now we've grown over
fifty, it has started to become unwieldy, and with each new hire it gets a little harder to maintain. Thus,
the aims of the userinfo plugin are:
(How many of these we get done really depends on how much time I have to spare )
Coming Soon:
First things first, I'm going to need somewhere to put all my source code.
The How to Build an Atlassian Plugin contains a template directory that you can rename to use for your
own plugin. Having a standard directory structure is useful, because it allows you to use maven (or the
ant tasks packaged in the plugins directory of your Confluence installation) to build your plugin jar. If
you use a different directory structure, you'll have to build the plugin yourself.
You'll have to think of a name for your plugin. There are probably better names than userinfo, but I
started this late on a Thursday afternoon. Also, you'll need a package name for your Java code. The Java
standard for package names is to reverse your company's domain-name, which is exactly what I've done
here:
I'm going to be doing all my development for this tutorial in the plugins directory of a copy of
Confluence 2.2.5 that I downloaded from the Atlassian website
In fact, I'll be doing all of my development in the same development environment I use to develop
Confluence itself. I will then be copying it into the aforementioned plugins directory and taking
screenshots, and pretending that's how I developed it in the first place.
In cooking shows, this would be called "...and here's one I prepared earlier."
You'll need to choose a unique plugin key. I can use the confluence.extra prefix for my plugin keys
because I work at Atlassian. You should make your plugin key the same as the Java package name you
chose earlier. You should also fill in the plugin metadata.
The plugin can now be built and installed into Confluence. I have no idea why you'd want to do it, but
it's sort of necessary to come away from each step in a tutorial with some tangible evidence you've
accomplished something. So here's what my new plugin looks like when I upload it into Confluence's
plugin manager:
That's it. A plugin with no plugin modules. Next, we write some code!
Downloads
Planning Ahead
The initial requirements for the userinfo plugin are that I need to:
In this part of the tutorial, I'm going to cover the first step. But in order to do so, I need to decide how
I'm going to gather this information.
The traditional wiki way to do this would be through "magic markup". We would define some special
Confluence markup (in Confluence that would be a macro) that users could insert into a page to set
their contact information, and have the macro save that somewhere for later retrieval. This approach
makes the programmatic interface very simple (you're only ever writing macros), but it doesn't make life
particularly easy for users who have to remember, or continually look up, some obscure wiki syntax.
Metadata Plugin
The Metadata Plugin is an excellent Confluence plugin that does just this. It allows arbitrary
metadata to be added to any page through a macro, and then allows you to collate, tabulate and
aggregate that data in some pretty cool ways. If we wanted to go the "magic markup" route, I could
just stop the tutorial now and say "use the Metadata Plugin instead".
The Metadata Plugin was written by the Pantero Corporation, and won an honourable mention in our
first ever plugin development competition.
Confluence has powerful plugin module types that allow you to modify not only the content of wiki pages,
but the functionality of the Confluence application itself. It's those modules that we will be using to gather
our users' contact information:
In this second part of the tutorial, we will concentrate on using an XWork plugin to display a form to the
user, and store and retrieve the information they submit.
Compiling and uploading the plugin I've written so far gives me the ability to set and edit my user
information:
Downloads
Unable to find source-code formatter for language: ruby. Available languages are:
actionscript, html, java, javascript, none, sql, xhtml, xml
class UserInfo
attr_accessor :position, :office, :extension, :mobile_phone, :other_phone,
:aim_id, :msn_id, :yahoo_id, :jabber_id, :icq_id, :skype_id;
end
However, Confluence plugins are written in Java. I've got to write this instead:
package com.atlassian.confluence.extra.userinfo;
import java.io.Serializable;
/**
* Dumb serializable bean so we can fit all the user info in a single property
*/
public class UserInformation implements Serializable
{
private String position;
private String office;
private String extension;
Luckily, 90% of the typing above can be done for me by any decent Java IDE.
The most important part of the code above is that the object is Serializable. This is what makes it
possible to store and retrieve the object later.
Confluence uses WebWork 2 as its web framework, which in turn uses a command framework called
XWork. XWork plugins allow you to add new commands to Confluence's web framework, which allows you
to add pretty much anything to the Confluence web application. For the userinfo plugin, I'm going to add
a form page into which users can input their contact details.
I need an action class. It needs to extend ConfluenceActionSupport, a base class that contains the
minimum functionality necessary for an action to play well with Confluence.
The Action will also need an instance of the UserInformation object that I defined earlier. I will expose
that property with a standard Java getter method, which will make it available when we write our form in
the next step.
package com.atlassian.confluence.extra.userinfo;
import com.atlassian.confluence.core.ConfluenceActionSupport;
XStream is a library for serializing Java objects to and from XML. The ContentPropertyManager is a
Confluence component that allows you to associate arbitrary properties with any Confluence content
object. Every Confluence user has a Content object associated with them, their PersonalInformation.
The combination of these three things is how I am going to store a user's contact details, by adding the
following to the EditUserInfoAction.
contentPropertyManager.setTextProperty(personalInformationManager.getPersonalInformation(username),
USERINFO_PROPERTY_KEY, xStream.toXML(userInformation));
}
if (TextUtils.stringSet(userInfoXml))
{
try
{
In the above code, we are relying on the fact that Spring, Confluence's component manager, will autowire
XWork actions (or any other plugin module). If you need a reference to any Confluence component (Like
the xStream service, ContentPropertyManager or PersonalInformationManager), all you need to do is
provide the appropriate setter method, and the component will be provided to the action before it is
executed.
From there we can write the code to write and read our contact details from the appropriate content
property.
1. The user is viewing the 'edit my contact information' form. The form should be pre-filled with their
contact information
2. The user is submitting changes to the form.
By convention, these two cases are dealt with using the action's doDefault and execute methods,
respectively. For the doDefault method, all I have to do is make sure that the userInfo property
contains the user's up-to-date contact details. getRemoteUser is a method on ConfluenceActionSupport
that returns the currently logged-in user.
For the execute method, I have to write the userInfo property back out. For now, let's assume that
XWork is magic, and that by the time execute() is invoked, userInfo has been populated with the
values submitted by the user.
Validation
One thing I'm not doing here is validating the form input. This is mostly because the data I am collecting
requires more effort to validate than it is worth. I don't really care too much if someone types an invalid
email address, they can just go fix it themselves.
If you wanted to add validation to the action, you could do so by implemeting a validate() method, as
described in the XWork custom validation documentation.
Having written the model and the controller, it's now time to work on the view. Confluence views are
written in Velocity.
Our velocity template needs to draw a form. It needs to populate that form with the UserInformation
object we loaded during the doDefault method of the EditUserInfoAction, and submit it back to the
action for saving.
<html>
<head>
<title>Edit Contact Details</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="thickPadded">
<form name="edituserinfo.form" method="POST" action="doedituserinfo.action">
<table class="greyBox" width="450" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="4">
#tag( TextField "label='Position'" "name='userInfo.position'" "size='50'" )
#tag( TextField "label='Office'" "name='userInfo.office'" "size='50'" )
#tag( TextField "label='Extension'" "name='userInfo.extension'" "size='4'"
)
Here I'm taking advantage of WebWork Velocity tags to draw the form elements. The velocity tags take
care of making the form elements part of the surrounding table, formatting them, filling them with their
associated data, and if necessarily associating them with validation errors.
Note that we've called each form userInfo.propertyName. This means that when we submit the
form, XWork will call getUserInfo().setPropertyName(value) for each property, thus populating our
UserInformation bean before it is saved in the execute() method.
Note also that this HTML is lacking anything to define the Confluence look and feel. SiteMesh will take
care of filling in the surrounding detail.
Now I've written my action class, I'll need to define a plugin module that adds my class to Confluence's
XWork configuration. This is done by adding this section to my atlassian-plugin.xml file.
<action name="edituserinfo"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.extra.userinfo.EditUserInfoAction" method="doDefault">
<result name="input" type="velocity">/templates/extra/userinfo/edituserinfo.vm</
result>
</action>
<action name="doedituserinfo"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.extra.userinfo.EditUserInfoAction">
<result name="input" type="velocity">/templates/extra/userinfo/edituserinfo.vm</
result>
<result name="success" type="velocity">/templates/extra/userinfo/edituserinfo.vm</
result>
</action>
</package>
</xwork>
Some notes:
• You can read more about XWork plugin modules here: XWork-WebWork Plugins
• The <package> section is essentially passed verbatim to XWork as if it was an xwork.xml file, so the
best place to look for more information is the XWork documentation.
• I've define two actions: one for viewing the form, and the other for submitting it.
• Since I'm not doing any input validation, I'm using the defaultStack interceptor chain.
I've written my form for entering my contact information, but it doesn't exactly look like a part of the
Confluence UI yet. There's no link to it from the regular navigation, and it's not decorated with all of the
the Confluence look and feel.
The input page for my details is now decorated to look like a part of the user's profile editing screen, and
is linked from just where you'd expect to find it:
Downloads
Web UI Plugins allow plugin authors to insert links to their custom actions or servlets directly into the
Confluence UI, at predetermined locations. The implementation is pretty simple: for the most part you
don't need any custom code to implement them, you just need to add their definitions to atlassian-
plugin.xml.
For my userinfo plugin, I am going to create a link to my custom action in the user's profile, just where
they would edit any of their other account details:
Some notes:
• The section attribute determines where in the Confluence UI the item will be inserted. The best
way to find out which section is correct is to look at Confluence's default web items in WEB-INF/
classes/plugins (they're defined in the -sections.xml and -tabs.xml files)
• You can also define icons for your link, but since this section doesn't use icons, we don't bother.
Now the link points to where we want it to, but when you follow the link, you're blown out of the theme's
tab layout. This is what we fix by adding a decorator to the form template.
This is the part of the tutorial with the most voodoo, at least so far. It involves changing the
edituserinfo.vm file so that it will invoke the correct decorator, which in turn will make the plugin look
like it is an integrated part of the Confluence UI. While following the instructions in this page will give you
a general idea of what I'm accomplishing, some of the decisions I make, like which decorator to call and
which action class to extend, are only applicable to this particular plugin.
The best way to find out what's right for your plugin, if you're not familiar enough with the Confluence
codebase to find out for yourself, is to ask on the developer mailing list. This tutorial should at least give
you a good idea what questions you need to ask.
Inline Decorators
Confluence makes heavy use of the Sitemesh library to lay out pages. Sitemesh works by decorating
content. The main decorator, main.vmd is applied to each page automatically. You can see this by looking
at the results of part 2 of the tutorial. Despite the fact that edituserinfo.vm does not contain any of the
code for the search bar, top bar or profile links, they're included on the resulting page.
The decorators that are used to build the tab panels and other themeable parts of the Confluence page
are invoked manually as inline decorators. In order to make the plugin a part of the profile tab
infrastructure, I modify the vm file like this (The full velocity file is [attached|^edituserinfo.vm], this is
just the important bit we're adding):
#applyDecorator("root")
#decoratorParam("context" "profile")
#decoratorParam("mode" "edit-profile")
#decoratorParam("helper" $action.helper)
#decoratorParam("infopanel-width" "200px")
• You will always be applying the "root" decorator. The root decorator is a dispatcher which chooses
the correct theme decorator to apply, based on the context and mode arguments supplied.
• The profile context and edit-profile mode tell the root decorator that we are displaying the
profile tabs, and that we currently have the edit tab selected.
• The helper must always be passed as a parameter.
• The infopanel-width should also be passed, it doesn't really do anything useful but some pages
still need it.
Each inline decorator makes certain assumptions about the action class that it is a result of. For example,
when drawing the HTML for the profile context, the decorator assumes the existence of a getUser()
method on the action. The easiest way to ensure that I have all the right methods for the decorator is
to find the abstract class that all of the stock Confluence actions that use that decorator extends. In the
case of the profile, this is com.atlassian.confluence.user.actions.AbstractUserProfileAction. By
modifying my EditUserInfoAction so that it extends AbstractUserProfileAction, the decorator will be
able to render successfully.
• Introduction
• XML-RPC
• SOAP
• Remote Methods
• Data Objects
• Notes
• Scripts Examples
• Changelog
Introduction
Confluence provides remote APIs as both XML-RPC and SOAP. This document refers to the XML-RPC
specification, see SOAP details below. XML-RPC and SOAP are both remote choices, as they have bindings
for almost every language making them very portable.
• SOAP is generally more useful from a strongly typed language (like Java or C#) but these require
more setup.
• XML-RPC is easier to use from a scripting language (like Perl, Python, AppleScript etc) and hence is
often quicker to use.
Looking for the JIRA remote APIs? They are here.
XML-RPC Information
Some borrowed from the (VPWik specification):
SOAP Information
The SOAP API follows the same methods as below, except with typed objects (as SOAP allows for).
To find out more about the SOAP API, simply point your SOAP 'stub generator' at the WSDL file, located
at http://<confluence-install>/rpc/soap-axis/confluenceservice-v1?wsdl .
• String login(String username, String password) - login a user. Returns a String authentication token
to be passed as authentication to all other remote calls. It's not bulletproof auth, but it will do for
now. Must be called before any other method in a 'remote conversation'. From 1.3 onwards, you can
supply an empty string as the token to be treated as being the anonymous user.
• boolean logout(String token) - remove this token from the list of logged in tokens. Returns true if
the user was logged out, false if they were not logged in in the first place (we don't really need this
return, but void seems to kill XML-RPC for me)
Administration
General
• ServerInfo getServerInfo(String token) - retrieve some basic information about the server being
connected to. Useful for clients that need to turn certain features on or off depending on the version
of the server. (Since 1.0.3)
Spaces
Retrieval
• Vector getSpaces(String token) - returns all the SpaceSummaries that the current user can see.
• Space getSpace(String token, String spaceKey) - returns a single Space.
• String exportSpace(String token, String spaceKey, String exportType) - exports a space and returns
a String holding the URL for the download. The export type argument indicates whether or not to
export in XML, PDF, or HTML format - use "TYPE_XML", "TYPE_PDF", or "TYPE_HTML" respectively.
Also, using "all" will select TYPE_XML.
Management
• Space addSpace(String token, Space space) - create a new space, passing in name, key and
description.
• Boolean removeSpace(String token, String spaceKey) - remove a space completely.
• Space addPersonalSpace(String token, Space personalSpace, String userName) - add a new space
as a personal space.
• boolean convertToPersonalSpace(String token, String userName, String spaceKey, String
newSpaceName, boolean updateLinks) - convert an existing space to a personal space.
Pages
Retrieval
• Vector getPages(String token, String spaceKey) - returns all the PageSummaries in the space.
Doesn't include pages which are in the Trash. Equivalent to calling Space.getCurrentPages().
Dependencies
Management
• Page storePage(String token, Page page) - add or update a page. For adding, the Page given as an
argument should have space, title and content fields at a minimum. For updating, the Page given
should have id, space, title, content and version fields at a minimum. The parentId field is always
optional. All other fields will be ignored.
• String renderContent(String token, String spaceKey, String pageId, String content) - returns the
HTML rendered content for this page. If 'content' is provided, then that is rendered as if it were the
body of the page (useful for a 'preview page' function). If it's not provided, then the existing content
of the page is used instead (ie useful for 'view page' function).
• String renderContent(String token, String spaceKey, String pageId, String content, Hashtable
parameters) - Like the above renderContent(), but you can supply an optional hash (map,
dictionary, etc) containing additional instructions for the renderer. Currently, only one such
parameter is supported:
° "style = clean" Setting the "style" parameter to "clean" will cause the page to be rendered as
just a single block of HTML within a div, without the HTML preamble and stylesheet that would
otherwise be added.
• void removePage(String token, String pageId) - remove a page
Retrieval
Management
Blog Entries
• Vector getBlogEntries(String token, String spaceKey) - returns all the BlogEntrySummaries in the
space.
• BlogEntry getBlogEntry(String token, String pageId) - returns a single BlogEntry.
• BlogEntry storeBlogEntry(String token, BlogEntry entry) - add or update a blog entry. For adding,
the BlogEntry given as an argument should have space, title and content fields at a minimum. For
updating, the BlogEntry given should have id, space, title, content and version fields at a minimum.
All other fields will be ignored.
• BlogEntry getBlogEntryByDayAndTitle(String token, String spaceKey, int dayOfMonth, String
postTitle) - Retrieves a blog post in the Space with the given spaceKey, with the title 'postTitle' and
posted on the day 'dayOfMonth'.
• Vector search(String token, String query, int maxResults) - return a list of SearchResults which
match a given search query (including pages and other content types). This is the same as a
performing a parameterised search (see below) with an empty parameter map.
• Vector search(String token, String query, Map parameters, int maxResults) - (since 1.3) like the
previous search, but you can optionally limit your search by adding parameters to the parameter
map. If you do not include a parameter, the default is used instead.
Security
User Management
Labels
• Vector getLabelsById(String token, long objectId) - Returns all Labels for the given
ContentEntityObject ID
• Vector getMostPopularLabels(String token, int maxCount) - Returns the most popular Labels for the
Confluence instance, with a specified maximum number.
• Vector getMostPopularLabelsInSpace(String token, String spaceKey, int maxCount) - Returns the
most popular Labels for the given spaceKey, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getRecentlyUsedLabels(String token, int maxResults) - Returns the recently used Labels for
the Confluence instance, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getRecentlyUsedLabelsInSpace(String token, String spaceKey, int maxResults) - Returns the
recently used Labels for the given spaceKey, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getSpacesWithLabel(String token, String labelName) - Returns an array of Spaces that have
been labelled with labelName.
• Vector getRelatedLabels(String token, String labelName, int maxResults) - Returns the Labels
related to the given label name, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getRelatedLabelsInSpace(String token, String labelName, String spaceKey, int maxResults)
- Returns the Labels related to the given label name for the given spaceKey, with a specified
maximum number of results.
• Vector getLabelsByDetail(String token, String labelName, String namespace, String spaceKey, String
owner) - Retrieves the Labels matching the given labelName, namespace, spaceKey or owner.
• Vector getLabelContentById(String token, long labelId) - Returns the content for a given label ID
• Vector getLabelContentByName(String token, String labelName) - Returns the content for a given
label name.
• Vector getLabelContentByObject(String token, Label labelObject) - Returns the content for a given
Label object.
• Vector getSpacesContainingContentWithLabel(String token, String labelName) - Returns all Spaces
that have content labelled with labelName.
• boolean addLabelByName(String token, String labelName, long objectId) - Adds label(s) to the
object with the given ContentEntityObject ID. For multiple labels, labelName should be in the form
of a space-separated or comma-separated string.
• boolean addLabelById(String token, long labelId, long objectId) - Adds a label with the given ID to
the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean addLabelByObject(String token, Label labelObject, long objectId) - Adds the given label
object to the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean addLabelByNameToSpace(String token, String labelName, String spaceKey) - Adds a label
to the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean removeLabelByName(String token, String labelName, long objectId) - Removes the given
label from the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
Data Objects
Most returned structs have a summary and a detailed form:
• The summary form is a primary key (ie space key, page id) and a representative form (ie space
name, page title)
• The detailed form will have all of the entity details as might be needed for the client.
ServerInfo
SpaceSummary
Space
PageSummary
Page
PageHistorySummary
BlogEntrySummary
BlogEntry
RSS Feed
Search Result
Attachment
Comment
User
Permission
Label
UserInformation
ClusterInformation
NodeStatus
Script Examples
The Confluence Extension space contains various examples of scripts
Changelog
2.3
2.2
2.1.4
• Added getPermissionsForUser.
2.0
1.4
• Added new exportSpace and exportSite methods to build exports of an individual space or an
entire Confluence instance and return with a URL leading to the download.
• Added new getChildren and getDescendents methods to get the direct children and all
descendents of a given page.
• Added new getAncestors method to get the ancestors of a given page.
• Removed the old getLocks as locks are superceded by page level permissions.
• Added new getPagePermissions method to retrieve page level permissions.
1.3
• Added new getPage method which retrieves a page by space key and page title.
• Added new removeSpace method to remove an entire space.
• Added ability to limit search by parameters.
• Allow anonymous access.
1.2
• renderContent takes an optional hashtable for rendering hints, the only one supported right now is
"style=clean"
1.1
• getLocks gives you back a list of any locks that apply to a given page
• added a locks field to the various Page structs containing a count of any applicable page-level locks
• CRUD methods added for blog-posts
1.0.3
• getServerInfo gives you some basic information about the server version CONF1123
• storePage now allows you to change the page's name (incoming links are all renamed) CONF-974
• storePage now reliably allows you to re-parent pages
• WSDL now respects the server's configured base URL, allowing it to work on proxy-hosted servers
CONF-1088
• Introduction
• XML-RPC
• SOAP
• Changelog
• Remote Methods
• Data Objects
• Notes
• Scripts Examples
Introduction
Confluence provides remote APIs as both XML-RPC and SOAP. This document refers to the XML-RPC
specification, see SOAP details below. XML-RPC and SOAP are both remote choices, as they have bindings
for almost every language making them very portable.
• SOAP is generally more useful from a strongly typed language (like Java or C#) but these require
more setup.
• XML-RPC is easier to use from a scripting language (like Perl, Python, AppleScript etc) and hence is
often quicker to use.
Looking for the JIRA remote APIs? They are here.
XML-RPC
Read Me First!
SOAP
The SOAP API follows the same methods as below, except with typed objects (as SOAP allows for).
To find out more about the SOAP API, simply point your SOAP 'stub generator' at the WSDL file, located
at http://<confluence-install>/rpc/soap-axis/confluenceservice-v1?wsdl .
• storeSpace
• importSpace
• getSpacesInGroup
• addSpaceGroup
• getSpaceGroups
• removeSpaceGroup
2.3
2.2
2.1.4
• Added getPermissionsForUser.
2.0
1.4
• Added new exportSpace and exportSite methods to build exports of an individual space or an
entire Confluence instance and return with a URL leading to the download.
• Added new getChildren and getDescendents methods to get the direct children and all
descendents of a given page.
• Added new getAncestors method to get the ancestors of a given page.
• Removed the old getLocks as locks are superceded by page level permissions.
• Added new getPagePermissions method to retrieve page level permissions.
• Added new removeUser, removeGroup, removeAllPermissionsForGroup, addUserToGroup and
removeUserFromGroup methods.
• Added new addPermissionToSpace method.
• Added new Permission data object.
• Added new getSpaceLevelPermissions method.
1.3
• Added new getPage method which retrieves a page by space key and page title.
1.2
• renderContent takes an optional hashtable for rendering hints, the only one supported right now is
"style=clean"
1.1
• getLocks gives you back a list of any locks that apply to a given page
• added a locks field to the various Page structs containing a count of any applicable page-level locks
• CRUD methods added for blog-posts
1.0.3
• getServerInfo gives you some basic information about the server version CONF1123
• storePage now allows you to change the page's name (incoming links are all renamed) CONF-974
• storePage now reliably allows you to re-parent pages
• WSDL now respects the server's configured base URL, allowing it to work on proxy-hosted servers
CONF-1088
Remote Methods
Authentication Methods
• String login(String username, String password) - login a user. Returns a String authentication token
to be passed as authentication to all other remote calls. It's not bulletproof auth, but it will do for
now. Must be called before any other method in a 'remote conversation'. From 1.3 onwards, you can
supply an empty string as the token to be treated as being the anonymous user.
• boolean logout(String token) - remove this token from the list of logged in tokens. Returns true if
the user was logged out, false if they were not logged in in the first place (we don't really need this
return, but void seems to kill XML-RPC for me)
Administration
General
• ServerInfo getServerInfo(String token) - retrieve some basic information about the server being
connected to. Useful for clients that need to turn certain features on or off depending on the version
of the server. (Since 1.0.3)
Spaces
Retrieval
• Vector getSpaces(String token) - returns all the SpaceSummaries that the current user can see.
• Vector getSpacesInGroup(String token, String spaceGroupKey) - returns all the SpaceSummaries
from a given group that the current user can see.
• Space getSpace(String token, String spaceKey) - returns a single Space.
• boolean storeSpace(String token, Hashtable Space) - Allows for modifying space details. Currently
you can update the name, homepage and spaceGroup properties of a space. Note that changing the
space key and other properties will have no effect.
• Space addSpace(String token, Space space) - create a new space, passing in name, key and
description.
• Boolean removeSpace(String token, String spaceKey) - remove a space completely.
• Space addPersonalSpace(String token, Space personalSpace, String userName) - add a new space
as a personal space.
• boolean convertToPersonalSpace(String token, String userName, String spaceKey, String
newSpaceName, boolean updateLinks) - convert an existing space to a personal space.
• String exportSpace(String token, String spaceKey, String exportType) - exports a space and returns
a String holding the URL for the download. The export type argument indicates whether or not to
export in XML, PDF, or HTML format - use "TYPE_XML", "TYPE_PDF", or "TYPE_HTML" respectively.
Also, using "all" will select TYPE_XML.
• boolean importSpace(String token, byte[] importData) - import a space in a compressed XML
format.
SpaceGroups
Retrieval
Management
Pages
Retrieval
• Vector getPages(String token, String spaceKey) - returns all the PageSummaries in the space.
Doesn't include pages which are in the Trash. Equivalent to calling Space.getCurrentPages().
Dependencies
• Vector getAttachments(String token, String pageId) - returns all the Attachments for this page
(useful to point users to download them with the full file download URL returned).
• Vector getAncestors(String token, String pageId) - returns all the ancestors (as PageSummaries) of
this page (parent, parent's parent etc).
• Vector getChildren(String token, String pageId) - returns all the direct children (as PageSummaries)
of this page.
• Vector getDescendents(String token, String pageId) - returns all the descendents (as
PageSummaries) of this page (children, children's children etc).
• Vector getComments(String token, String pageId) - returns all the comments for this page.
• Comment getComment(String token, String commentId) - returns an individual comment.
• Comment addComment(String token, Comment comment) - adds a comment to the page.
• boolean removeComment(String token, String commentId) - removes a comment from the page.
Management
• Page storePage(String token, Page page) - add or update a page. For adding, the Page given as an
argument should have space, title and content fields at a minimum. For updating, the Page given
should have id, space, title, content and version fields at a minimum. The parentId field is always
optional. All other fields will be ignored.
just a single block of HTML within a div, without the HTML preamble and stylesheet that would
otherwise be added.
• void removePage(String token, String pageId) - remove a page
Retrieval
Management
Blog Entries
• Vector getBlogEntries(String token, String spaceKey) - returns all the BlogEntrySummaries in the
space.
• BlogEntry getBlogEntry(String token, String pageId) - returns a single BlogEntry.
• BlogEntry storeBlogEntry(String token, BlogEntry entry) - add or update a blog entry. For adding,
the BlogEntry given as an argument should have space, title and content fields at a minimum. For
updating, the BlogEntry given should have id, space, title, content and version fields at a minimum.
All other fields will be ignored.
• BlogEntry getBlogEntryByDayAndTitle(String token, String spaceKey, int dayOfMonth, String
postTitle) - Retrieves a blog post in the Space with the given spaceKey, with the title 'postTitle' and
posted on the day 'dayOfMonth'.
Search
• Vector search(String token, String query, int maxResults) - return a list of SearchResults which
match a given search query (including pages and other content types). This is the same as a
performing a parameterised search (see below) with an empty parameter map.
• Vector search(String token, String query, Map parameters, int maxResults) - (since 1.3) like the
previous search, but you can optionally limit your search by adding parameters to the parameter
map. If you do not include a parameter, the default is used instead.
Security
User Management
Labels
• Vector getLabelsById(String token, long objectId) - Returns all Labels for the given
ContentEntityObject ID
• Vector getMostPopularLabels(String token, int maxCount) - Returns the most popular Labels for the
Confluence instance, with a specified maximum number.
• Vector getMostPopularLabelsInSpace(String token, String spaceKey, int maxCount) - Returns the
most popular Labels for the given spaceKey, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getRecentlyUsedLabels(String token, int maxResults) - Returns the recently used Labels for
the Confluence instance, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getRecentlyUsedLabelsInSpace(String token, String spaceKey, int maxResults) - Returns the
recently used Labels for the given spaceKey, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getSpacesWithLabel(String token, String labelName) - Returns an array of Spaces that have
been labelled with labelName.
• Vector getRelatedLabels(String token, String labelName, int maxResults) - Returns the Labels
related to the given label name, with a specified maximum number of results.
• Vector getRelatedLabelsInSpace(String token, String labelName, String spaceKey, int maxResults)
- Returns the Labels related to the given label name for the given spaceKey, with a specified
maximum number of results.
• Vector getLabelsByDetail(String token, String labelName, String namespace, String spaceKey, String
owner) - Retrieves the Labels matching the given labelName, namespace, spaceKey or owner.
• Vector getLabelContentById(String token, long labelId) - Returns the content for a given label ID
• Vector getLabelContentByName(String token, String labelName) - Returns the content for a given
label name.
• Vector getLabelContentByObject(String token, Label labelObject) - Returns the content for a given
Label object.
• Vector getSpacesContainingContentWithLabel(String token, String labelName) - Returns all Spaces
that have content labelled with labelName.
• boolean addLabelByName(String token, String labelName, long objectId) - Adds a label to the object
with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean addLabelById(String token, long labelId, long objectId) - Adds a label with the given ID to
the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean addLabelByObject(String token, Label labelObject, long objectId) - Adds the given label
object to the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean addLabelByNameToSpace(String token, String labelName, String spaceKey) - Adds a label
to the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean removeLabelByName(String token, String labelName, long objectId) - Removes the given
label from the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean removeLabelById(String token, long labelId, long objectId) - Removes the label with the
given ID from the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean removeLabelByObject(String token, Label labelObject, long objectId) - Removes the given
label object from the object with the given ContentEntityObject ID.
• boolean removeLabelByNameFromSpace(String token, String labelName, String spaceKey) -
Removes the given label from the given spaceKey.
Data Objects
Most returned structs have a summary and a detailed form:
• The summary form is a primary key (ie space key, page id) and a representative form (ie space
name, page title)
• The detailed form will have all of the entity details as might be needed for the client.
SpaceSummary
Space
SpaceGroup
PageSummary
PageHistorySummary
BlogEntrySummary
BlogEntry
Search Result
Attachment
Comment
User
Label
UserInformation
ClusterInformation
NodeStatus
Scripts examples
The Confluence Extension space contains various examples of scripts
Questions By Topic
Installation Troubleshooting
Post-Installation Troubleshooting
General Questions
LDAP
JIRA User Integration
Plugin Development
RSS Feeds
Site Backup & Restore
JIRA Issues Macro
Mail Archiving
Installation Troubleshooting
Solutions to common issues with installing Confluence. Review your logs by opening the Confluence
install directory and checking the /logs/catalina.out and /logs/catalina.out files for errors
described below. Click on a problem to show the solution.
Confluence window
closes immediately when started
1. Open a command prompt. On Windows, do this by clicking on your Start menu, then click Run. In
the Run box, type cmd and press OK
2. From the command prompt, go to your Confluence install directory
3. Go into the bin subdirectory
4. Run startup.bat and read the error message
5. Find the solution to that error below
If http://localhost:8080 goes to an error page when you run Confluence, go to the install directory and
find the /logs/catalina.out. If this file contains a single line error starting with "Exception in thread "main"
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError", your install path may contain spaces. The solution is to rename your
install directory path so that there are no spaces, then restart Confluence.
You have not installed the Java Development Kit, or not set the %JAVA_HOME% to the directory of the
JDK. You should re-check your steps in Stage 2.
If you have another Tomcat running on the same machine, you must edit <INSTALL>/conf/server.xml and
change both 8080 and 8005 to ports that do not conflict with your other Tomcat instance according to
these instructions.
If you did not use one of the recommended unzipping tools, and happened to use for instance the
default Windows XP extractor, one of the classes required for starting up Confluence may not be located
due to the lengthy file-path. This is due to the reason that the default Windows tool silently fails to
extract files with long names. We suggest you to use other tools such as WinZIP and 7zip and redo the
deployment process.
Cause:
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Error registering bean with name
'fileSystemAttachmentDataDao' defined in class path resource applicationContext.xml: Class that bean
class com.atlassian.confluence.pages.persistence.dao.FileSystemAttachmentDataDao depends on not
found; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/pages/persistence/
dao/FileSystemAttachmentDataDao$FileSystemAttachmentNamingStrategy
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultXmlBeanDefinitionParser.parseBeanDefinition(DefaultXmlBeanDefinitionP
caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/pages/persistence/dao/
FileSystemAttachmentDataDao$FileSystemAttachmentNamingStrategy
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
Check the server logs for errors. If you are running Confluence Standalone on Windows, error messages
will be printed to the console window that opened when you ran startup.bat. On Unix systems,
Confluence will log messages to logs/catalina.out.
If you try to login with the correct username and password but are always returned to the login screen
without any error messages, and you are running Zone Alarm, please check that it is not blocking the
Confluence server
When trying to create a EAR file, you may encounter with the following error:
BUILD FAILED
file:/users/a237185/confluence/confluence-2.7/build.xml:67: Warning: Could not find file /users/
a237185/confluence/confluence-2.7/etc/ear-application.xml to copy.
This is due to the build.xml file being incorrect for Confluence 2.6.x and 2.7.0. This problem will be fixed
for future releases. However for these releases, please open the build.xml file and change the following
two lines:
From:
To:
Post-Install Troubleshooting
General Questions
Currently Confluence does not support renaming or copying spaces through the user interface. You may
wish to vote towards these feature requests:
• Feature request to clone an entire space - this will enable duplication of every page, news item and
comment plus space themes and colour schemes.
• Feature request to copy a page hierarchy between existing spaces.
Note that this plugin is still in beta release, and is not officially supported by Atlassian.
Alternatively, it is possible to manually clone or rename a space by modifying an XML backup of the
target space.
Notes
1. Select a new, unique space key and name for the second space. Space keys may only consist of
ASCII letters or numbers (A-Z, a-z, 0-9) and no empty spaces are allowed in the key.
2. Clone your production Confluence instance to a test server on another computer now. You should
now have a production server and test server both containing the same data and can avoid the risk
of corrupting your production Confluence instance.
3. On the test server, login as an administrator.
4. Go to Browse Space -> Advanced -> Export Space and export the target space as XML including
attachments.
9. Do a 'Search' for any occurrences of the old space name that occur in user content. You may wish to
replace some or all of these references with the new space name. Replace Old Space Name and New
Space Name with the actual names.
Search For
Old Space Name
10. Do four 'Search & Replaces' on each of the references to the old space key as shown below. Swap
out oldkey and newkey for your actual keys.
Search For Replace With
[oldkey] [newkey]
spaceKey=oldkey spaceKey=newkey
[oldkey: [newkey:
key=oldkey] key=newkey]
For example:
The above search and replace ensures that you will change the test oldkey to test2, and change the
"Test Space* Old Space Name to Test Space 2.
11. Save the modified entities.xml.
12. Overwrite the original entities.xml in the space backup with the modified version.
13. Login to the test instance as a Confluence administrator.
14. Go to Administration -> Backup & Restore. Under 'Upload a zipped backup to Confluence', browse to
select to the modified space backup. Check the 'Build index' option and select 'Upload & Restore'.
15. Once the restore process has completed, access the new space and test that you can access pages,
embedded links and attachments. Any error in this step indicates that your search and replace was
performed incorrectly and you should to retry from step 2.
Links in other spaces to the old space will remain unchanged. If you are renaming a space, you will
need to change these links to point to the new space. Users who are copying a space can leave the links
pointing to the original space by skipping this stage.
Changing these links depends on if you want to change every link, or only some. If not all links must be
changed or you are unwilling to stop your production instance, this must be done by editing each page
individually. If all links must be changed, follow the instructions below.
7. Save the updated entities.xml back into the modified site XML backup file
8. Start the production instance
9. Import the modified site XML backup from Administration -> Backup & Restore. If you have any
problems, revert to the original unmodified backup and redo the links manually instead
Done.
Related
Confluence pages and attachments can be mounted as a network drive, and files can be dragged
and dropped into Confluence using the WebDav plugin. Alternatively, users who do not wish to use
WebDav can write a custom script to attach all PDF files in a directory to a Confluence page using the
addAttachment function in the Remote API. This script can be adapted from one of the Remote API script
examples.
Confluence has no inbuilt support for spell checking. You may wish to vote for Confluence to add it's own
spell checking or add spell checking to your browser instead:
Windows users must manually delete any backup files. Linux users can insert a nightly or weekly
automation script or cron similar to the following:
ls -t <path to your backup dir>/* | tail +6 | xargs -i rm {}
There is a minor slowdown every time the backup is performed, usually nightly between 2am and about
2.10am. If the performance hit is significant, you can switch to an external backup process for large
instances.
Switch to a manual backup process according to the 'Backups For Large Instances' section of Site Backup
and Restore, which will give you more control over disk usage.
Yes, as long as the attachments have been backed up are the same time. Refer to Site Backup and
Restore.
• encountering problems creating a site backup from the Administration > Backup and Restore
page
• automatic daily backups do not work anymore
• last working backup size without attachments is large (say over 500Mb)
You may want to consider an alternative backup strategy. As you may have already discovered, the built
in backup functionality in Confluence requires a lot of memory to run. In some cases, increasing the total
memory allocated your Confluence instance will still not help.
• Create a backup or dump of your database using tools provided by your database
• Create a backup of your Confluence home directory
You can disable daily backups from Administration > Daily Backup Admin.
We want to stress that creating these two backups is just as good as having a Confluence backup. You
will be able to restore your whole site, including all data, attachments and configuration information
intact with these two backups. We have written up a document on how to do this here.
There is no way to modify the default font from the user interface, so you will need to customise
Confluence's CSS manually. This can be modified in your Confluence install directory under \confluence
\styles\site-css.vm
(or under \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\styles\site-css.vm for earlier versions of Confluence).
If you have velocity caching disabled, you can modify the Confluence font without restarting the
application server. Click on the browser's Refresh button to see the changes take effect.
Font Size
By changing the value of the font-size field relative to the line-height field, you will be able to
increase or decrease the base font size shown in the browser.
This modification should work with Internet Explorer browsers. For other browsers like Mozilla Firefox,
the modification may not show because the browser may have a default font configuration that prevents
font size from being changed. Firefox users may like to modify the font setting preferences in the Content
option, prior to making the above changes to Confluence.
Font-Family
The font-family property is a prioritiszed list of font family names and/or generic family names for an
element. The browser will use the first value it recognises.
• Separate each value with a comma, and always offer a generic-family name as the last
alternative.
• If a family-name contains white space, it should be quoted. Single quotes must be used when
using the 'style' attribute in HTML.
More detailed discussions on modifying fonts are available in W3Schools' CSS Font Properties online
documentation.
Confluence supports populating wiki content through templates. Check out Page Templates if you would
like to create a new page by filling in a graphical, form-based template. If you have an existing page and
would like to pass text as parameters to a macro that fills in the blanks in a template, create the template
as a User Macro and call it from inside your Confluence page.
$helper.renderConfluenceMacro("{recently-updated:dashboard|
showProfilePic=true}")
There is no need to stop or restart confluence. The change should work on the next refresh of the page.
How do I prevent just anyone from being able to sign up for new accounts?
Confluence gives you the option to enable or diable "public signup". If you want to restrict your site to a
particular set of users, you can easily disable public signup from the 'General Configuration' section of the
Administration Console.
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
There are two different permissions that need to be set to allow anonymous access to a Confluence site.
First, the 'Anonymous' user needs the global "Use Confluence" permission, secondly you need to give
'Anonymous' permissions in each space you want to make public. Full instructions can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS
Security Overview
Users and Groups
Confluence Main FAQ
Generate a basic log indicating which users are accessing which pages in Confluence. Application servers
are able to log the requested URL, but they cannot determine the currently logged in user. This log is not
currently formatted to be accessible to web log analysis tools such as AwStats as it lacks a host and get
method, so must be viewed manually.
Similar to JIRA, Confluence has a built-in access logging mechanism, which shows the user and URL
invoked. To enable it, you need to modify a couple of configuration files and restart Confluence.
log4j.category.com.atlassian.confluence.util.AccessLogFilter=INFO, confluencelog
log4j.additivity.com.atlassian.confluence.util.AccessLogFilter=false
And enable the filter in web.xml by removing the comments around these lines:
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>AccessLogFilter</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/display/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
Enabling this AccessLogFilter will result in logging information being stored in the standard confluence log
files.
Advanced configuration
After this is working, you could redirect the access log to a different file by adding a new
RollingFileAppender at the top of log4j.properties:
log4j.appender.accesslog=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.accesslog.Threshold=DEBUG
log4j.appender.accesslog.File=${catalina.home}/logs/atlassian-confluence-access.log
log4j.appender.accesslog.MaxFileSize=20480KB
log4j.appender.accesslog.MaxBackupIndex=5
log4j.appender.accesslog.layout=com.atlassian.confluence.util.PatternLayoutWithStackTrace
log4j.appender.accesslog.layout.ConversionPattern=%d %p [%c{4}] %M %m%n
To enable this logger, you need to add 'accesslog' to the log4j.rootLogger property, and change the
AccessLogFilter logger line from 'confluencelog' to 'accesslog'.
The web.xml url-pattern given above only matches page views (/display/*). You could change the url-
pattern, or duplicate the entire filter-mapping to log access for different kinds of access (/admin/* for
admin functions, /pages/* for edits and creates, etc. Note that /pages/editpage.action* doesn't work).
What is logged
The above may be preceded by additional log4j-generated text, depending on the log4j pattern which is
configured.
Google Analytics can be easily integrated with Confluence for access tracking.
After signing up, copy the Javascript and paste it into the 'Before end of <body>' section of
Administration, Custom HTML. This will put the Javascript on every page generated by Confluence.
This might not work correctly if your users are behind a firewall or authenticated proxy.
RELATED TOPICS
Atlassian supplies 'developer' licenses which can be used by existing commercial license holders who wish
to deploy non-production installations of our software to use in QA/staging environments.
Developer licenses are free of charge to commercial license holders and, like our commercial offerings,
they include 12 months of updates starting from the date of purchase of the commercial license.
If you hold a commercial license, you can obtain a free developer license by performing the following:
For the recommended minimum amount of disk space, please see the 'Requirements' section in the
Installation Guide.
Note that the actual disk space needed will depend significantly on the number of attachments (i.e. files
which users attach to Confluence pages), and on the sizes of the attachments. You can calculate the hard
drive requirements as you would with any standard file server.
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
I can not find the "Rich Text" editor. Does Confluence 1.4.3. contain the Editor?
The Rich Text Editor (aka WYSIWYG editor) is available in Confluence 2.O and upwards. Rich Text editing
is enabled by default.
If you wish to upgrade your Confluence installation, instructions can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
First perform an XML backup of your Confluence site. You can do this from the Administration > Backup
and Restore page.
Once you've made the backup file, you can set up a new Confluence instance from scratch against your
new database and restore the backup that you just created. Detailed instructions can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
When you experience search problems within your Confluence instance, or can't find things after
performing an upgrade, one simple solution that can help you to locate your content is to manually
rebuild the index, as described in Content Index Administration.
If you are still experiencing problems after performing the above rebuild, the next step may be to remove
the index and rebuild it from scratch, as described below. For example, the rebuild procedure described
above may not restore a corrupted index file. You may want to ensure that all index files are re-created.
The Space Activity feature uses the index to store data. The procedure described below will delete
the existing activity data.
If you still cannot find your content, please contact confluence support.
Can I set Confluence to redirect users to a space homepage immediately after login?
Yes. You can direct users to any of the space homepages when they login to the site This is configured by
a site administrator from the Administration Console. Instructions on how to do this can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS
Administration Guide
Customising Space Homepage
If a user has permission to upload attachments, you can restrict them to certain filetypes only by
installing the Attachment Filter. You can also restrict the maximum size of any one attachment that a
user can upload.
So long as you have not changed the user authentication from the default (i.e. you are NOT using
external user management such as LDAP or JIRA) the users of confluence are stored in OS_USER table.
The user's properties such as fullname, email and when they previously logged in, are stored in the
OS_PROPERTYENTRY table.
If you know the user's username (which can be found in OS_USER table), you can find their details using
the following query:
Confluence sends notifications of changes to spaces or pages to users who are watching pages. Users
choose to watch pages or spaces, an administrator does not force notifications upon them.
There is one way to automatically have users watch a given page or news item. The Autowatch
Plugin can be set up to have anyone who contributes to a space watch the content they have
contributed to. Eg. if they comment on a page, they will be set to watch that page for further
updates. This should be used with care.
For Users
For Administrators
As an administrator, if you want to configure confluence to send notifications and test that it is working,
follow these instructions:
1. Set up a mail server at Administration -> Mail servers. See Configuring a Server for Outgoing Mail.
• Make sure you use "Send Test Email" to check that the server is working. Check that you get
the test email in your inbox.
2. Go to your profile (using the Preferences link) and click Edit Profile -> Email Preferences, then
enable Notify On My Action. (Otherwise you'll have to use multiple users. By default confluence does
not send you notifications for your own changes.) See Managing Watches
3. While editing your profile, make sure you have an email address configured. SeeConfiguring a
Server for Outgoing Mail
4. Go to a page you wish to get notifications about.
5. Click the Envelope icon in the top right corner to "watch" that page. See Watching a Page.
6. Edit the Page.
7. Either wait a while or: Go to Administration -> Mail Queue. Click "Flush Mail Queue". See The Mail
Queue.
8. Check your email.
To save your having to enter users into both JIRA and Confluence, you can configure Confluence to use
JIRA's user database.
RELATED TOPICS
First, you will need to purchase Confluence to receive your commercial license key. If you already have
a free 30 day evaluation then you can easily convert this to the commercial version, or setup your
commercial instance on another system and transfer your trial data across.
If you wish to change your trial into a commercial version while keeping the same hardware, login in as
a Confluence administrator and paste in your commercial license key under the Administrator > License
Details screen. The conversion to a commercial version is instantaneous and can be done regardless of
whether your evaluation period has expired or is still ongoing.
If you installed your Confluence trial on a PC but wish to host your commercial version on another
system, such as a server managed by your IT department, you can transfer the trial data across.
Begin by creating an XML backup on the trial PC, then install Confluence on the commercial server.
During installation, you will be presented with the Confluence Setup Wizard. The wizard gives you the
opportunity to insert your commercial license key and also to import an XML backup. If you import the
XML backup from your trial, your commercial instance will be setup already containing all your trial wiki
content and any internal users.
Attachments, extensions and configuration files are stored in the Confluence Home Directory that is
configured when Confluence is first installed. All remaining data resides in the configured database.
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
Sometimes a user can experience problems indexing large MSExcel or MSPowerPoint documents and the
reindexing may cause potential Unknown Ptg warning messages that are harmless. There is already a
request to Suppress these warnings from the re-indexing of unreadable documents by the POI library.
The error is usually not serious yet can sometimes cause problems when large attachments are used. So
you may like to disable indexing of a particular type of document.
The example below shows a pdfContentExtractor disabled which would cause PDF attachments not to be
indexed.
Once the ContentExtractor for a file type is disabled, all files of that type become unsearchable.
<!--
<extractor name="PDF Content Extractor" key="pdfContentExtractor"
class="com.atlassian.bonnie.search.extractor.PdfContentExtractor" priority="1100">
<description>Indexes contents of PDF files</description>
</extractor>
-->
<extractor name="MS Word Content Extractor" key="msWordContentExtractor"
class="com.atlassian.bonnie.search.extractor.MsWordContentExtractor" priority="1100">
<description>Indexes contents of Microsoft Word files</description>
</extractor>
To resolve it, you will need to add the following JVM parameter the startup of your application server.
-Datlassian.java.naming.referral=follow
Solutions to common issues with installing Confluence. Review your logs by opening the Confluence
install directory and checking the /logs/catalina.out and /logs/catalina.out files for errors
described below. Click on a problem to show the solution.
Confluence window
closes immediately when started
1. Open a command prompt. On Windows, do this by clicking on your Start menu, then click Run. In
the Run box, type cmd and press OK
2. From the command prompt, go to your Confluence install directory
3. Go into the bin subdirectory
4. Run startup.bat and read the error message
5. Find the solution to that error below
If http://localhost:8080 goes to an error page when you run Confluence, go to the install directory and
find the /logs/catalina.out. If this file contains a single line error starting with "Exception in thread "main"
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError", your install path may contain spaces. The solution is to rename your
install directory path so that there are no spaces, then restart Confluence.
You have not installed the Java Development Kit, or not set the %JAVA_HOME% to the directory of the
JDK. You should re-check your steps in Stage 2.
If you did not use one of the recommended unzipping tools, and happened to use for instance the
default Windows XP extractor, one of the classes required for starting up Confluence may not be located
due to the lengthy file-path. This is due to the reason that the default Windows tool silently fails to
extract files with long names. We suggest you to use other tools such as WinZIP and 7zip and redo the
deployment process.
Cause:
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Error registering bean with name
'fileSystemAttachmentDataDao' defined in class path resource applicationContext.xml: Class that bean
class com.atlassian.confluence.pages.persistence.dao.FileSystemAttachmentDataDao depends on not
found; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/pages/persistence/
dao/FileSystemAttachmentDataDao$FileSystemAttachmentNamingStrategy
at
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultXmlBeanDefinitionParser.parseBeanDefinition(DefaultXmlBeanDefinitionP
caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/atlassian/confluence/pages/persistence/dao/
FileSystemAttachmentDataDao$FileSystemAttachmentNamingStrategy
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
Check the server logs for errors. If you are running Confluence Standalone on Windows, error messages
will be printed to the console window that opened when you ran startup.bat. On Unix systems,
Confluence will log messages to logs/catalina.out.
The CATALINA_HOME environment variable is set to another instance of Tomcat. You should run
shutdown.sh, remove the CATALINA_HOME reference to the other Tomcat version, and run startup.sh
again.
If you try to login with the correct username and password but are always returned to the login screen
without any error messages, and you are running Zone Alarm, please check that it is not blocking the
Confluence server
BUILD FAILED
file:/users/a237185/confluence/confluence-2.7/build.xml:67: Warning: Could not find file /users/
a237185/confluence/confluence-2.7/etc/ear-application.xml to copy.
This is due to the build.xml file being incorrect for Confluence 2.6.x and 2.7.0. This problem will be fixed
for future releases. However for these releases, please open the build.xml file and change the following
two lines:
From:
To:
Text in Confluence plugins can be internationalised to cater for a variety of locales or languages. To do
this, you will need to create a translated copy of the properties file(s) for each plugin and bundle these
inside your language pack plugin. Having a properties file in each plugin allows plugin authors to provide
internationalised plugins without having to add their i18n keys to Confluence's core source.
Confluence comes bundled with a few plugins that are stored in a file called atlassian-bundled-
plugins.zip. The basic process for translating a plugin is:
Below is a list of bundled plugins that can be internationalised and the properties file you will need to
translate (correct as of Confluence 2.7):
Below are the system plugins (found in confluence/WEB-INF/lib/) that can be internationalised and the
properties file you will need to translate:
For problems relating to the JIRA Issues Macro, click on your query below for the solution.
'Error Rendering Macro' or No Issues Are Displayed or Not All Issues Are Displayed
You must append a JIRA username and password to your JIRA issues filter URL. That JIRA user must
also have permission to view the all issues returned by the filter, otherwise they will be omitted. Please
append the os_username and os_password as described below so that
jiraissues:url=http://host.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?... becomes
jiraissues:url=http://host.com/secure/
IssueNavigator.jspa?...&os_username=MYUSERNAME&os_password=MYPASSWORD where MYUSERNAME
and MYPASSWORD are a JIRA login.
'Error rendering macro: java.io.IOException: Error on line -1: Premature end of file'
Did you select an existing JIRA filter? If you did, your issues filter URL will end with .../12345/
SearchRequest-12345.xml where 12345 is any number. You should retry using a new and unsaved filter.
This document is an FAQ for the mail archiving feature that was introduced in Confluence 1.3. Versions of
Confluence before 1.3 do not have this feature.
Since this document was written before we released Confluence's mail archiving features, these are
more "frequently anticipated questions" than "frequently asked questions". Hopefully I have anticipated
correctly.
A. No.
Confluence's mail archive is designed to supplement the way you currently handle email, not replace it.
This is why Conflence deliberately does not come with features common in email clients. You can not
mark emails as read or unread, you can not reply to emails from within Confluence, and so on.
A. Here are two scenarios that were suggested during our planning meetings:
Project-related conversations
Say you are using a Confluence space to organise some project. The project lead and the customer have
a long conversation (via email) clarifying the project's goals and requirements. Rather than have that
conversation lost in their individual mailboxes, they CC: their mail to a POP box being monitored by
Confluence, and all that information is archived alongside the rest of the project's documentation.
All incoming and outgoing sales and support email is diverted (at the mail-server) to be read by
Confluence. Staff can then use Confluence's features to find all previous communications with particular
customers.
And?
Of course, the real fun will come from seeing what uses people put this feature to that we didn't even
think of.
A. All mail messages belong to a particular space. Space administrators can, from the space
administration screen:
Warning: Confluence will delete mail from a POP box as it reads it. Do not point Confluence to an account
unless you are happy with it removing all the mail you have stored there.
A. Because of the typically overwhelming volume of email, especially compared to the more sedate pace
of wiki updates, we do not notify you of recently arrived mail in the same places we notify you of changed
Confluence content.
Mail will not appear in the recent changes list on the dashboard or space summary pages. Similarly, mail
will not appear by default in search results.
Q. I want it to do...
A. Chances are, so do we. We just haven't got there yet. The emphasis for the DR3 release was to be
able to:
We have a lot more planned, from threading email through to allowing you to write your own custom pre-
and post- processors for incoming mail.
Your suggestions are, of course, welcome. File an issue in JIRA, comment on the forum, or just drop us
an email.
This page hosts a collection of hints about how to get to specific Confluence screens and functions. Each
hint is contained in a child page of this page.
Note to authors
Many of the hints are included (as excerpts) into other pages. For this reason, each hint should be
short and generic.
List of hints:
The 'Browse Space' view displays space-wide summary information and offers tools for managing the
space.
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
Yes you can. Camelcasing is not enabled by default but a site administrator can easily enable it from the
administration screens.
RELATED TOPICS
CamelCase linking
FAQ Home
Some wiki software allows the editing of sections within a page (sectional editing). This functionality is
currently not available in Confluence, but we are looking to include it in a future release. This issue is
being tracked on the Confluence JIRA project: CONF-5913.
In the meantime, for pages that are getting long enough to be hard to edit in a single block, you can get
an approximation of sectional editing by using the {include} macro. For example:
{include:Section One}
{include:Section Two}
The links to the edit pages can be simplified by using the {link-to:page edit} macro available in David
Peterson's Linking Plugin.
Technical Stuff
The problem lies in the complexity of Confluence's wiki markup. We made a couple of proof-of-concept
implementations of sectional editing as part of our "Fedex Day" program, and while it's quite easy to
come up with a solution that works with 90% of pages, there are a lot of edge-cases where it's actually
quite hard to determine precisely where a given section starts and finishes.
Next time we perform a significant overhaul of our wiki markup processing engine, we'll be looking
specifically to add functionality that will make sectional editing work properly.
Essentially, Confluence is a wiki. Our aim was to build an application that was built to the requirements of
an enterprise knowledge management system, without losing the essential, powerful simplicity of the wiki
in the process.
On top of that, we added professional features, such as the partitioning of content into separately
managed spaces, user- and group-based access control, automated refactoring, PDF exporting,
searchable attachments, a comprehensive remote API, easy installation and a professional and easy-to-
use presentation; all wrapped up in Atlassian's "Legendary Service".
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
You can set the page that a user gets sent to after a successful login on a site-wide or per-user basis.
Site-wide
The spaces available to be set as your home page depends on the access permissions of the space and
your site.
• If your site allows anonymous access, the site homepage must also be anonymously accessible.
• If your site does not allow anonymous access, the site homepage must be accessible to the
"confluence-users" group.
In Confluence 1.2 and earlier, the site homepage has to be anonymously accessible, regardless of site
permissions.
Note: please ensure that the View Space Goes to Space Summary setting is set to OFF if you want users
to be sent to space homepage instead of the summary page
Per User
1. View your profile via the profile link on the top right
2. Click the Edit My Profile on the right
3. Set Site Homepage to your desired home page
One major concern is Confluence's ability to withstand a Slashdot, and someone told us that
Atlassian had basically said that Confluence could not handle the load of such an event/attack.
Ideally I would want to put a Squid cache directly infront of Conflunce, set the default policy
to cache content of normal pages for ~5 minutes (at least) and then pass-through more of the
dynamic pages (like the editor & such).
This is, in fact, the case. We don't have any deployed Confluence sites that have the requirement of being
Slashdot-proof, but this is probably one of those chicken-and-egg things.
The problem is not one of simple scaleability. We're currently working on "Confluence Massive", a
clusterable Confluence that will scale to handle whatever load you feel like throwing at it. But if your aim
is to protect the server against sudden, transient loads, throwing a cluster at the problem that will then
spend 99% of its time not being utilised is probably a waste. Thus, the best solution is to have some kind
of caching reverse-proxy that will divert load away from Confluence itself.
The main problem with the reverse-proxy solution is that every Confluence page is built dynamically
for whichever user is currently accessing it. This affects obvious stuff like the "You are logged in as
username" notice, less obvious stuff like the "edit" and "attachments" links that appear or disappear
based on whether the user has permission to perform the action on the other end of the link, and even
less obvious stuff like wiki-links to spaces the user can't see, or in-page macros that output their content
based on the user's identity.
If you had (1), you could tell the proxy to cache content only for anonymous users (since all anon content
is the same, and to survive a slashdotting you only really have to worry about the sudden influx of non-
logged-in users). That said, (1) is quite tricky, as it relies on the existence of some SSO mechanism that
both Confluence and Squid can be hooked into. If such a mechanism existed, though, it'd be a really neat
solution.
• Theme Confluence so that the 'view page' 'view blog post' and 'view mail' pages contain no
personalised content: no profile link or user identity, and all links to other functions available
whether the user has permission to access them or not.
• Ensure that all wiki pages on the server are meant to be visible to anonymous users
• Disable (or avoid the use of) macros that deliver different content based on user identity
• Introduce an interceptor into Confluence that would provide If-Modified-Since/Last-Modified
conditional get support for wiki pages
• Configure Confluence so the site root URL points to a page, rather than the dashboard.
• Configure Squid to cache the 'view page' URLs (/display/* /pages/viewpage.action /pages/
viewblogpost.action)
This is assuming that only the site root or a regular wiki page would ever be the victim of a direct
slashdotting, but I figure this is a reasonable enough assumption to make.
With conditional get supported, you could have Squid configured to query the server to see if a page
has changed, and just put in some kind of sensible defaults for the maximum time to cache any page (5
minutes or so would be fine, since pages could contain dynamic content), and the minimum gap between
if-modified queries (15 seconds would easily prevent the server from being overloaded, while making
sure that in regular use you wouldn't get many situations where you edited a page, but couldn't see your
own changes).
java.lang.NullPointerException
at
com.atlassian.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.getEnabledModuleDescriptorsByClass(DefaultPluginManager.java:495)
...
Check your Confluence log files for a database listener error reporting that the SID is unknown. On
standalone, the log file to check is atlassian-confluence.log in the logs directory of your Confluence
install, for example C:\confluence-2.2.9-std\logs\atlassian-confluence.log. Scroll to the bottom
of the file and search or browse for a "Listener refused" error such as:
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: Listener refused the connection with the following error:
ORA-12505, TNS:listener does not currently know of SID given in connect descriptor
The Connection descriptor used by the client was:
my.dbserver.com:1522:myschema
This example was thrown on an Oracle database, where my.dbserver.com was the database server, and
myschema was the Oracle SID. Your error may be different.
You will need to modify your database connection URL specified in the Resource for your database. On
standalone, this is in the server.xml file in the conf directory of your confluence install, for example C:
\confluence-2.2.9-std\conf\server.xml. An example connection URL is:
jdbc:oracle:thin:@my.dbserver.com:1521:myschema
If your connection URL is missing the @ symbol before the server hostname, add it and restart. If the @
symbol is present, check that the schema ID is correct. Oracle users can check the SID of their database
in the Oracle tnsnames file.
There are some cases where the unzip utility used to unzip the Confluence download will recursively
unzip all contained zip files. The demo-site.zip should be located in the WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian
\confluence\setup directory. If it has been extracted, you will see an entities.xml file in this directory
instead.
RELATED TOPICS
If this happens, please check your logs. The following message may appear:
If you see this, you are most likely using GCJ/Kaffe, which sometimes has problems running Confluence.
Please try using the Sun JDK.
The technical explanation is that you have two different versions of Sun's Javamail libraries in your
application classpath. When Confluence tries to send an email, Java gets confused as to which version of
the library it should be using, and falls over. If (and only if) you are encountering this error, try removing
the Javamail-1.3.jar and activation-1.0.1.jar files from the confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory of
your Confluence installation, and restarting the server. The problem should go away.
RELATED LINKS
FAQ Home
Problem
Attachments, pages or attachments have been deleted from a Confluence instance, possibly over an
extended period of time.
Probable Cause
A user has experienced this problem when downloading an offline copy of their Confluence instance using
Webcopier.
WebCopier follows every link in Confluence using an aggressive spidering strategy that includes automatic
posting of confirmation forms. When WebCopier is run over a page, it follows the remove attachment
or page link and performs the equivalent of clicking the OK button on the 'Are you sure you want to
remove...?' dialog. If Webcopier has authenticated itself as a user with delete permission for that content,
it will then be removed.
Detection
Enable user access logging and identify the username deleting content by searching the access log for
suspicious requests to doreremoveattachmentonpage.action or removepage.action
Notes
Webcopier must be used on a Confluence site by an authorised Confluence user for the above problem to
occur. For a spider to delete content, it must be provided with the credentials of a Confluence user with
the delete privilege and set to blindly post confirmation prompts.
Confluence protects against against updates from automated spiders, such as those that would trawl a
public instance of Confluence, by requiring that updates to Confluence content are posted via a form.
Search spiders and other crawlers avoid populating and submitting forms for precisely this reason and at
present, Webcopier is the only spider reported to submit confirmation forms by default.
I am using MySQL, and after a while Confluence stops working with database errors.
MySQL's JDBC drivers have an annoying default behaviour where if a connection is idle for a certain
amount of time (by default, eight hours), it is closed. Since Confluence uses a connection pool, this
means that pooled connections die if they are not used within a certain time period.
The solution is to append ?autoReconnect=true to the end of your database's JDBC URL.
• If you are using JNDI data-sources, you will do this in your application server's configuration files.
• If you have configured Confluence to access the database directly, you will need to manually edit
the hibernate.connection.url property in the confluence.cfg.xml file in your confluence.home
directory. After you have changed the URL in this file, restart Confluence.
Note
In Confluence versions 1.0RC5 and before, there was a bug that manifested when you used Confluence
to connect directly to a MySQL database instead of going through a datasource configured in the
application-server under which Confluence runs. Unfortunately the symptoms of the bug were identical to
the much more common problem above, so it took us a little longer to find the problem than we should
have.
So long as you specify autoReconnect=true, Confluence 1.0RC6 and later should remain connected to
your MySQL database indefinitely.
RELATED TOPICS
Configuration Guide
FAQ Home
Problem
While running Confluence under an application server such as JBoss or Jetty, Confluence fails on startup
with the exception below.
Solution
<servlet>
<servlet-name>SeleneseServletSpike</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.thoughtworks.selenium.outbedded.CommandBridge</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>SeleneseServletSpike</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/selenium-driver/driver</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Related
To fix this issue that prevents Confluence from starting up, open the file /confluence/WEB-INF/classes/
confluence-init.properties and check that at the bottom, confluence.home is specified to an empty,
valid directory. Use the backslash (eg c:/data) and ensure there is write access to the directory. When
changing the directory, save the file and restart the application server.
In the Administration->Look and Feel->Custom HTML, I've edited the Custom HTML and due to some
broken tags I wasn't able to 'Save' the customization when I try editing it again. The save button no
longer show up in edit mode.
You will need to remove all the customized HTML and run /admin/doeditcustomhtml.action on your
Confluence instance. Please note that this operation will permanently remove the previous custom HTML.
Problem Description
If you are using the Dynamic Tasklist Macro and have upgraded the Confluence server to JDK1.5 or later,
editing any tasklist content throws an exception with error cause:
Cause
Workarounds
Until CONF-4082 can be patched, reverting to JDK 1.4 will re-enable all tasklist content.
1. Stop Confluence
2. Revert the Confluence server to the JDK version on which the tasklist content was created. The JDK
used is the version set by your JAVA_HOME parameter, so users can change this value to the old
JDK path to use that JDK again. (Guide to changing the JAVA_HOME parameter on Windows)
If users wish to move to JDK 1.5 before CONF-4082 is patched, they must manually transfer the tasklist
content across.
Error
When trying to edit or save a page, an error screen is shown and the page is not updated.
Cause
Confluence is deployed twice in the application server. The Confluence install should only be manually
deployed via confluence.xml or server.xml. If the Confluence install directory is under an application
server directory which is being auto-deployed, such as under the Tomcat webapps directory, Confluence
will be deployed a second time.
Solution
The Confluence install directory referenced by confluence.xml or server.xml must be moved to a directory
outside of the application server, so that is it no longer auto-deployed. See the instructions for installing
the Confluence EAR WAR edition.
If you are browsing a space and looking at the "tree view", 404 errors may appear (or it will display
"Loading...") if the base url of your Confluence instance is not set (or is set incorrectly).
You can fix this by going to Administration -> General Configuration, and making sure that the "Base
URL" setting is set to the correct address/domain name and path.
If you allow multiple domains or sub-domains to be used to access a Confluence installation, you should
ideally have them redirect to a single domain or sub-domain that matches the settings in General
Configuration.
RELATED TOPICS
I am trying to use thumbnails, and I get the message: "This Confluence installation can not generate
thumbnails: no image support in Java runtime"
On some Java installations (i.e. Unix without X11), you need to pass an additional parameter to Java
when you are starting up to tell it how to use its image-manipulation libraries - to run in a headless
mode, thus appending -Djava.awt.headless=true option. Getting thumbnail support working in this
configuration depends on your application server.
As a Windows Service:
On Windows:
On Linux:
For other application servers, you will need to append the java.awt.headless=true parameter to the
JAVA_OPTS. If you need help with a particular server, please lodge a support request.
RELATED TOPICS
Configuration Guide
FAQ Home
Cause:
some.plugin.class.here: java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: some/plugin/class/here (Unsupported
major.minor version 49.0)
This is caused by installing a plugin that requires a newer version of Java than the version you have
currently installed. You can either install the latest JDK, or uninstall the plugin:
One of the plugins you just installed will be the cause of the problem. Plugins are installed as JAR files,
which you can manually remove. Your error message contains a plugin class that indicates which plugin is
causing the problem. Known plugins are:
The plugin JAR file will be in one of the following Confluence plugin directories:
Confluence Home/plugins
Confluence Install/confluence/WEB-INF/lib
I am getting Out of Memory errors, how can I allocate more memory to tomcat?
Since the default memory setting usually is around 64 or 128MB (256MB in Confluence 2.2 and later),
you might have to adjust the settings to run a bigger Confluence instance with sufficent memory. Users
running Confluence as a service please refer to the Start Confluence automatically on Windows as a
Service page. For users running Tomcat standalone, you will have to change the following settings:
Do not set your memory using CATALINA_OPTS, because this is overridden by JAVA_OPTS.
On Linux
An example of a minimal setting for a large system - max heap size is set to 1Gb :
On Windows
Other OutOfMemoryErrors
Other factors such as system load and allocating too much memory to your JVM Heap can also
cause OutOfMemory Errors.
This error occurs when the operating system is unable to create new threads. This is due to the JVM Heap
taking up the available RAM.
Big heaps take away from the space that can be allocated for the stack of a new thread
For Linux the maximum heap size of the JVM cannot be greater than 2GB. If you only have 2GB RAM in
your server, it is not recommended to set the Max size of the JVM that high.
The size of the stack per thread can also contribute to this problem. The stack size can reduce the
number of threads that can be created.
To fix this problem, you should reduce the size of your JVM Heap and also the size of the stack per
thread.
The stack size can be changed with the following (example) parameter:
"-Xss512k"
This error indicates that the JVM took too long to free up memory during its GC process. This error can be
thrown from the Parallel or Concurrent collectors.
This kind of OutOfMemoryError can be caused if your java process is starting to use swapped memory for
its heap. This will cause the JVM to take a lot longer than normal to perform normal GC operations. This
can eventually cause a timeout to occur and cause this error.
To overcome this issue, you need to make sure that all processes can't allocate more memory than there
is system memory. In practice this is impossible to do for all processes. At a minimum you should make
sure that all your jvm's do not have a total maximum memory allocation than your normally available
system memory.
On OS X
If you are using the 'serveradmin start appserver' to start and stop tomcat, then you will need to update /
usr/share/servermgrd/bundles/servermgr_appserver.bundle/Contents/Resources/run.sh
If you get the error message: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space this means that you
have exceeded Java's fixed 64Mb block for loading class files. You will need to add the argument -
XX:MaxPermSize=256m to JAVA_OPTS, in addition to any argument you use to set the heap size.
JDK 1.4 does not provide information why the OutOfMemory error occurred.
JDK 1.5 or 1.6 are recommended as they provide a description of the error as in the above example.
RELATED TOPICS
If you are getting "Page Not Found" errors when trying to view pages with spaces in the titles, and are
using WebSphere, we recommend updating your WebSphere instance to 5.1.1 (with fixpack 3) or above.
This is a bug in prior versions, and is fixed in fixpack 3.
When system performance on Linux is affected by using too many file descriptors, usually an error can
be seen in the log file '(Too many open files)'. Although this affects the entire system, it is a fairly
common problem.
Confluence 2.3 was released and the issue with using too many file handles was resolved via
utilisation of compound indexing.
To obtain the current maximum number of file descriptors, use 'cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max'. For
comparison, an out-the-box ubuntu system has file-max set to 205290.
To prevent Confluence from running out of filehandles you need to make sure that there are enough file
handles available at the system level, and that the user you are running Confluence as is allowed to use
enough file handles:
Run the command sysctl -a. If this is less than 200000, increase the number of file handles by editing
/etc/sysctl.conf and changing the property fs.file-max to 200000. If there isn't a value set already
for this property, you need to add the line fs.file-max=200000.
Linux also limits the number of files that can be open per login shell. To change this limit for the user that
runs the Confluence service you will need to adjust the user limit configuration.
For Linux systems running PAM you will need to adjust /etc/security/limits.conf
For example to set the limit for the user confservice the following line would be used:
Other systems
For other Linux systems the file responsible for setting limits is /etc/limits
To replicate the setting given in the previous example the line would be:
confservice N 5000
1. Locate the Confluence ProcId by identifying the Java process with{{'ps axwwwu | grep java'}}
2. Either run ls -la /proc/<pid>/fd, or use the lsof (LiSt Open Files) command lsof -p <pid of
Confluence process>. For a Confluence ProcID of 460, use:
$ lsof -p 460 | wc -l
If you are encountering the Too many open files error within Confluence and this advice does not help,
please accompany any support request with the output of lsof -p <PID of Confluence process>,
taken at the time of the error, so that the support engineer can determine precisely which file descriptors
are being held open.
To address this issue we have modifed the bonnie.jar to switch the indexing to use compound
index that uses less file handles. Please see CONF-7401 for details. To use this patched jar please
follow the following steps:
Alternatively, please upgrade your instance to Confluence 2.3 via following these instructions.
Some customers have reported problems with permissions, where some space and/or global permissions
have been lost if using a case-sensitive database. The problem arises when the case of the username
or group name, as referenced by the permssion, does not match the case of the user's username or the
group name.
Examples
1. User John Doe has username jdoe but the permission was created for JDOE.
2. User John Doe has username jdoe but the permission was created for JDoe.
In some cases, situations like those above may result in the space permission or global permission
being ignored.
• The space permissions and global permissions screens will display a message highlighting any case-
sensitivity mismatches.
• We have also provided a routine to fix existing permissions affected by the case sensitivity problem,
as described below.
Then the routine will change the permission's username to match the user's username exactly, in terms
of upper/lower case.
Similarly for group permissions, the routine will change the permission's group name to match the related
group name exactly, in terms of upper/lower case.
If one or more duplicate permissions exist as a result of this change, the duplicates will remain i.e. the
routine will not remove any duplicated permissions. In these rare cases, you may see the following
behaviour:
• When you view the permissions on the screen, you will only see one row even if duplicates exist.
• If you delete a permission which has a duplicate, the duplicate will show on the screen. So you may
need to delete the permission again.
http://{CONFLUENCE-BASE-LOCATION}/admin/fixCaseInSpacePermissions.jsp
2. Read the information on the page, to verify that you do indeed want to run this routine.
3. Click 'Proceed' to run the routine.
If your web browser is complaining about JavaScript errors or functions not being defined, then it is
possible that you are not retrieving the latest versions of pages from your Confluence instance.
To fix this, you need to clear your browser cache. Follow the instructions for your particular browser:
• Internet Explorer
• Firefox - Open the Preferences -> Privacy -> Click on the "Clear Cache" button
• Safari - Go to the Safari menu -> Clear Cache
Another possible cause of javascript errors is interference by antivirus software. For example, it has been
reported that NOD32 antivirus software can attempt sanitation of some confluence javascript when that
javascript is served by IIS.
You need to install the X11 libraries for your Linux distribution. See Confluence Unix and X11
Dependencies.
RELATED TOPICS
Configuration Guide
FAQ Home
If users find that some attachments are missing for pages, they should:
1. Right click on findattachments.jsp and save it to the Confluence server's installation directory under
/confluence/admin/
2. Restart Confluence
3. Visit http://MYINSTANCE/admin/findattachments.jsp where MYINSTANCE is your Confluence base
URL
4. Request the 'Missing attachment report'
5. Attach the result to a new support ticket
Solutions to common issues with RSS Feeds and the RSS Feed Macro. Click a query below for the
solution.
For instances with anonymous access enabled, you can force user authentication when creating the feed
by checking 'Authorised'. If anonymous access is disabled, all feeds will require user authentication.
You must append a valid login to Private Feeds as described in the Usage section of the RSS Feed Macro.
The URL is invalid. If the link appears correct, confirm that you can access Confluence. Paste the feed into
a third-party RSS feed reader and confirm that it can access it. If it cannot, your firewall settings may be
blocking access to Confluence. For example, your server may be configured to block outgoing requests.
The feed source may be offline, or the firewall may be blocking access either between the Confluence
server any your computer. Confirm that you can access the feed URL from your browser. If it cannot, your
firewall settings may be blocking access to Confluence. For example, your server may be configured to
block outgoing requests.
The link is not a valid feed, so check your URL. If stuck, you can recreate internal Confluence feeds Using
the RSS Feed Builder.
This is not possible, but you can vote towards tagging incoming mail with labels on arrival. Once tagged,
feeds could monitor all new mail with that label.
Is it possible to delete a
feed?
No, as RSS feeds are based on the view permissions for pages and spaces. RSS is an extension of normal
page viewing functionality, so if you can view a page, you can receive an RSS feed for it. The only way to
remove the an RSS feed is to prevent all access to a page for that user, so no content will be delivered.
While Confluence does not have this functionality, there is a work around to remove RSS completely.
Refer to How do I Disable RSS Feeds?.
Due to some users having problems with Confluence RSS Feeds, some research was done with several
RSS Feed Readers. RSS Feeds have been created through the feed builder and tested on a Windows
machine. For each feed reader they have been tested with both authentication and public access,
checking for the visibilty of content, icons and images. The results are in the tables below:
Search is not finding my data AND the indexing process does not appear to be completing. What's
happening?
If you are not seeing pages returned by the search that you expect to be returned, it's most likely that
the indexing is not running correctly (either not running or failing). You can check the status of the index
processing via the Administration Console > Content Indexing link.
Why could indexing be failing? The indexing process is multi-threaded and therefore has a tendency to
consume a lot of resources when running an initial index or reindexing the entire site. So, what can do
wrong?
• Some systems do not like the multi-threaded index process. You can set the index process to us
only a single thread by setting bucket.indexing.threads.fixed=1
• The index process may also block if there are insufficient available database connections. Increasing
the number of connections from 15 to 30 will help in this situation.
RELATED TOPICS
FAQ Home
I am getting an error message about NoClassDefFoundError when using the Chart macro
The following error may appear when viewing certain pages where the Chart Macro is used:
This is indicative of an out-of-date version of the Chart macro. Make sure you have the latest version and
have removed any old versions or dependencies. If you are using Confluence 1.4, it may be a symptom of
not having the jfreechart and jcommon JARs in your installation, which are required.
RELATED TOPICS
The Dashboard
Using the Confluence Screens
Customising the Dashboard
Page Layout in View Mode
Page Layout in Edit Mode (Wiki Markup)
Page Layout in Edit Mode (Rich Text)
Confluence Icons
Displaying an Image
Rich Text-Inserting an image
Image File Formats
Thumbnail Macro
Gallery Macro
Tracking Updates
Searching Confluence
Searching the People Directory
Confluence Search Syntax
Confluence Search Fields
Customising Confluence
Customising Homepage
Customising Look and Feel
Applying A Theme To A Space
Modifying Confluence Layouts Using Custom Decorators
Editing a Space's Colour Scheme
Changing a Space's Logo
Archiving Mail
Security
Security Overview
Users and Groups
Site Administrators and their permissions
Space Administrators and their permissions
Space Permissions Overview
Viewing Space Permissions
Assigning Space Permissions
Page Restrictions
Keyboard Shortcuts
Appendix D - Macros
Macros
Appendix E - Glossary
Confluence Glossary
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
Confluence allows you to collect and archive mail within each space individually. This is a useful facility
that allows you to archive all emails pertaining to a particular project on Confluence alongside it in the
same space.
You can download mail from one or more pop-accounts. You can also import mail from mbox files either
on your local system or on the Confluence server.
Mail is contained in the 'Mail' tab under the 'Browse Space' view of a space. You can navigate mail easily,
and also use the 'Quick Search' to search mail and the attachments it contains.
The ability to archive mail applies only to global spaces, not personal spaces. Please see Working
with Spaces Overview for information about the differences between global spaces and personal
spaces.
RELATED TOPICS
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
When you add a mail account, you are configuring Confluence to download mail from that account and
archive it within the space. Since Confluence removes emails from an email account as it is added to the
Mail Archive, Confluence must be setup to poll a clone email account rather than the actual account. For
example, to archive the actual account sales@company.com to your Confluence Sales space, you must
first create a clone account such as conf-sales@company.com that contains the same email content.
1. Add a new email account on the mail server with the clone email address
2. Copy all existing emails from the actual account to the clone account
3. Setup the actual account to bcc sent emails to the clone account
4. Setup the actual account to forward received emails to the clone account
1. If you are not a space administrator for the target space, contact your Confluence administrator to
request Space Admin permission. You need to be a space administrator before you can add a mail
account to the space.
2. Go to the 'Space' menu and select 'Mail'
3. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab and click on 'Mail Accounts' under the heading 'Mail' in the left panel.
This will bring up a new screen listing the existing mail accounts and displaying a link to add a new
pop-account.
4. Click 'Add mail account' located at the top of the page. This will bring up a form into which you need
to enter your account configuration details.
5. Enter the details, (Protocol may be POP/S or IMAP/S) (See below) and click 'Create'. Configured
accounts will have their mail downloaded and removed from the server, so make sure you are
downloading from a clone account.
Screenshot Of Adding A POP Account
• Account Name: Enter a name for this account by which it will be known in Confluence.
• Description: Provide a description for this account (Optional).
• Protocol: Choose from POP, IMAP, POPS or IMAPS
• Hostname: Enter the account mail server host name.
• Port: The mail server's port number will be displayed by default. Do not edit this field.
• Username: Enter a username for this account.
• Password: The account's password.
Note: The ability to import mail applies only to global spaces, so the 'Import' section in the above
screenshot does not appear in the 'Space Admin' tab for personal spaces. Please see Working with
Spaces Overview for information about the differences between global spaces and personal spaces.
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
To delete mail for a space, you require 'Remove Mail' permission which is assigned by a space
administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
Only a space administrator can delete all mails for the space simultaneously.
Warning
RELATED TOPICS
Restoring Mail
Archiving Mail Overview
Browsing a space
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
You need to be a space administrator to manually retrieve new mail from mail accounts.
Note
Once mail is fetched, it will be removed from the server.
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing Mail
Archiving Mail Overview
Deleting Mail
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
Confluence allows you to import mail from mbox files located either on your local system or on the
Confluence server and archive it within the space.
The ability to import mail applies only to global spaces, so the 'Import' section in the above
screenshot does not appear in the 'Space Admin' tab for personal spaces. Please see Working with
Spaces Overview for information about the differences between global spaces and personal spaces.
RELATED TOPICS
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
Currently in Confluence, while it is possible to link to a mail message, the method is a little cumbersome.
To link to an email,
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Mail' tab. The mail is displayed in reverse chronological order with a default of 30 mails
per page. Move between pages to locate the message you want to link to.
3. Click on the mail message. You will notice in the address bar of your browser that the url displayed
ends in a series of numerals.
4. Copy only the numerals.
5. Click on the 'edit' tab of the page from which you want to link to the message.
6. Paste the numerals between square brackets (as you would when you create any link in
Confluence), and then include the dollar sign '$' in front of the numerals.
Here's an example:
RELATED TOPICS
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
RELATED TOPICS
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
Deleted email messages are stored under 'Trash' and can be restored by a space administrator from the
Space Administration screens.
You can only restore an email from trash if it was deleted individually and not using the 'Remove All'
operation.
To restore mail,
To view this email, you will have to go to the 'Mail' tab under 'Browse Space'.
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing Mail
Fetching Mail
Deleting Mail
Browsing a space
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Mail' tab. The mail is displayed in reverse chronological order with
a default of 30 mails per page. You can move between pages by clicking the
and
links or by selecting a
particular page number.
3. Click on a mail message to view its contents.
If you are a space administrator, or have been given permission to delete mail messages, you can also
delete emails from here.
Navigating Mail
'Find More': These links links at the top of an email message let you search for other emails from the
same author or on the same subject.
'Attachments': This link located below the email body allows you to view mail attachments. The link is
only displayed if any attachments exist.
'Entire Thread': This link allows you to view the mail's thread, if one exists.
The 'Mail Operations' panel is located to the right of the mail view and displays links to:
• Entire Thread: View the thread that this mail belongs to. This option is only available when the mail
belongs to a thread.
• Next By Date: Navigate to the next message.
• Previous By Date: Navigate to the previous message.
• Remove Mail: Remove the current mail from the space.
• Mail Archive: Go to the mail archive view for this space.
RELATED TOPICS
The Administration Console is the interface for the global administration of Confluence.
Administrators
Please refer to the overview of global permissions for details of the functions which each level of
administrator can perform.
Breadcrumbs
The breadcrumbs trace the path from the current page to the dashboard along the space's page-
hierarchy.
CamelCase
CamelCase is a form of markup commonly used in wikis where words compounded together LikeThis
without spaces are used to create links.
Change Comment
A change comment is a short description entered during the edit of a page to record the changes being
made in the edit.
Child Pages
Creating child and parent pages is a means by which you can organize content on the site. A child page is
a page that has a parent in any of the Confluence spaces.
Comments
A comment may be a remark, question, or any other additional information you wish to add to a page
pertaining to the topic the page covers. You can comment on any page or news item in Confluence.
Confluence Administrators
Please refer to the overview of global permissions for details of the functions which each level of
administrator can perform.
This is the markup used to write and edit pages in Confluence. Based on Textile, the markup, when you
become familiar with it, makes creating pages as easy as writing email.
Custom Decorators
Decorator files are used to define layouts in Confluence. They are vmd files and require knowledge of the
language, Velocity, to edit.
Dashboard
The dashboard is the front page of a Confluence site. It provides an overview of the site, access to all
spaces, and displays a list of the most recently updated content within them.
Form field markup is a specialised markup for creating form fields and is used when creating page
templates.
Global Administrators
Global Spaces
For more information about global spaces and personal spaces, see Working with Spaces Overview.
JIRA
JIRA is Atlassian's award winning Issue tracking and project management application.
Labels
Labels are user-defined tag words assigned to pages to categorise content in Confluence.
Macros
A macro is a command wrapped inside curly braces {...} used to perform programmatic functions and
generate more complex content structures in Confluence.
News Items
A news item may be a journal entry, status report or any other timely information pertaining to a space.
Notifications
A notification is an email message sent to you updating you of changes to pages and spaces you choose
to 'watch'.
Orphaned Pages
Pages
Pages are the primary means of storing information in Confluence. They are the building blocks of spaces
and are written in Confluence markup.
Page Family
Pages in Confluence can be organised into a hierarchy of parent and child pages. A parent and all its
children comprise a page family.
Parent Page
A parent page is a page that has one or more child pages. It may itself be a child of another page.
People Directory
The People Directory contains a list of all users in your Confluence site. Each user's name links to their
personal space.
Permalink
A permalink is the url used to link to specific content items like comments.
Personal Spaces
Personal spaces belong to particular users, and rather than being listed on the Dashboard, are available
from the People Directory.
For more information about global spaces and personal spaces, see Working with Spaces Overview.
RSS Feeds
An RSS feed is a format for delivering summaries of regularly changing web content. RSS is read by RSS
newsreader programs.
Confluence acts as an RSS reader for feeds from sites outside of Confluence.
RSS Reader
An RSS reader is a specialised RSS program (also called aggregator) that displays the contents of RSS
feeds for you. To subscribe to RSS feeds within Confluence, you will need an RSS reader.
Site Administrators
System Administrators
Please refer to the overview of global permissions for details of the functions which each level of
administrator can perform.
----
Space Administrators
A space administrator is a user with the 'Space Admin' permission for the space. A user with this
permission can perform a host of functions relating to the management of a space and has complete
access to the space regardless of any other control settings or permissions.
Permissions for a space are only assigned and modified by space administrators.
Spaces
A space is an area on your site into which you can group different content items together based on any
theme of your choice. All content in Confluence is organised into spaces.
There are two types of spaces: global spaces and personal spaces.
Templates
A template is a pre-defined page that can be used as a prototype when creating pages. Templates are
useful for giving pages a common style or format.
Themes
Themes are pre-defined 'look and feel' styles which are configured from the administration menu and can
be applied across Confluence or to a single space.
Tiny links
A tiny link is the shortened url of a page which is useful when sending links to the page, for example, via
email.
Trackback
Trackback is a mechanism by which two sites can stay informed each time one site refers to the other by
means of trackback 'pings'.
Trackback Autodiscovery
Trackback autodiscovery is a block of code that can be placed in a web-page to describe where trackback
pings should be sent for that page. You can read the technical specification for autodiscovery here.
When Trackback is enabled, Confluence uses Trackback Autodiscovery to ping pages that are linked to,
and to advertise its own pages as being able to receive pings.
An undefined link is a link to a page that has not yet been created. Clicking on the page link allows you
create the page.
User Profile
Every user account in Confluence is linked to a profile that contains user related information and options
to configuring user preferences.
Watching a Page
When you watch a page, you are sent an email notification whenever that page has been modified.
Watching a Space
When you watch a space, you are sent an email notification whenever content has been added or
modified in that space.
Wiki
Pioneered by Ward Cunningham, and named after the Hawaiian word for 'quick', a wiki is a website that
makes it easy for anyone to contribute pages, and link them together.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence Icons
Icons are used throughout Confluence to provide quick links and indicators. The most frequently used
icons are:
Icon Description
Go to the people directory.
RELATED TOPICS
Dashboard
Confluence Glossary
Confluence pages are stored internally in a simple content-formatting language called Wiki Markup, based
on Textile.
The Wiki Markup Editor allows you to edit Confluence pages directly in wiki markup language. This has
the advantage of being faster than the Rich Text Editor for some formatting tasks.
A quick notation guide, Notation Help, appears beside the edit screen when you choose the Wiki Markup
edit tab. You can then click the full notation guide link in the help window to view the full Notation Guide.
This shows you the entire list of formatting and other complex operations that Confluence's notation
permits, along with the markup detailing how to perform them.
Try it now
Because wiki markup is designed to be simple to learn, the quickest way to learn wiki markup is to
edit an existing page, switch to the wiki markup editor and experiment.
What does the Notation Guide contain and why is it not part of the
Confluence User Guide?
The Confluence Notation Guide is included as part of the Confluence code and is dynamically generated
when you view it. Its contents depend upon:
If you view the Full Notation Guide from the Atlassian Confluence site, you will see the information for
the macro plugins currently installed on this site. If you view the Full Notation Guide from your own
Confluence instance, you will see information for the macro plugins installed on your site.
The plugin developer writes the help file and includes it in the macro code.
Examples of Markup
Here's a short example of some typical markup:
Here, in comparison, is how that would look if you had to edit the page in HTML:
<h4>Confluence Markup</h4>
<p>Ideally, the markup should be <em>readable</em> and even <strong>clearly understandable</strong>
when you are editing it. Inserting formatting should require few keystrokes, and little thought</p>
<p>After all, we want people to be concentrating on the words, not on where the angle-brackets
should
go.</p>
<ul>
<li>Kinds of Markup
<ul>
<li>Text Effects</li>
<li>Headings</li>
<li>Text Breaks</li>
<li>Links</li>
<li>Other</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
RELATED TOPICS
Emoticons are little images you can easily use in a Confluence page. They use a simple wiki markup as
shown below, or you can insert them using the Rich Text editor.
Notation Image
:)
:(
:P
:D
;)
(y)
(n)
(i)
(/)
(x)
(!)
(+)
(-)
(?)
(on)
(off)
(*)
(*r)
(*g)
(*b)
(*y)
Templates are written in the same notation as other pages in Confluence with special markup to insert
form fields. When a user creates a page using a template that contains form fields, the user will be
prompted to key in data. The data will be captured and stored in the new page.
Here are the three kinds of form fields supported and the markup to create them:
Every input field must have a unique name. If you have more than one text input field in the same
template with the same name, Confluence will make sure that they all end up with the same value (This
is useful if you need the same information in more than one place in the page).
Warning
There must be no spaces between the @-signs in the markup. This means you can't have items in
your drop-down lists that contain spaces.
Improved Markup
The above formatting is the basic markup bundled with Confluence, but two plugins expand on this
markup to provide greater functionality. Links to these plugins and a comparison can be found in the
Working with Templates Overview.
RELATED TOPICS
You can use Confluence Notation or the Rich Text editor to create headers.
Creating a header is easy. Simply place "hn." at the start of your line (where n can be a number from
1-6).
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence allows you to create bulleted or numbered lists, and is flexible enough to allow a combination
of the two lists.
If you need to separate the text within lists using line breaks, make sure you do so using a double
slash (//). Empty lines may disrupt the list.
Simple lists
Use the hyphen (-) to create simple lists.
Make sure there is a space between the hyphen and your text.
Bulleted lists
Use the asterisk (*) to create bullets. For each subsequent level, add an extra asterisk.
Make sure there is a space between the asterisk and your text.
Numbered lists
Use the hash (#) to create numbered lists.
Make sure there is a space between the hash and your text.
A second level of hashes will produce a sub-list, such as the alphabetical sub-list shown below.
In numbered lists as described above, the format of the 'number' displayed at each list level may be
different, depending upon your browser and the style sheets installed on your Confluence instance.
So in some cases, you may see letters (A, B, C, etc; or a, b, c, etc) or Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, etc)
at different list levels.
Mixed lists
RELATED TOPICS
You can use Confluence wiki markup or the Rich Text editor to create tables. Below are some guidelines
on using wiki markup to create tables.
Table Type 1
Allows you to create a simple table with an optional header row. You cannot set the width of the columns
in this table.
Use double bars for a table heading row.
Table Type 2
This method allows you to specify the width of the columns in the table.
{section:border=true}
{column:width=30%}
Text for this column goes here. This is the smaller column with a width of only 30%.
{column}
{column:width=70%}
Text for this column goes here. This is the larger column with a width of 70%.
{column}
{section}
Text for this column goes here. This is the smaller Text for this column goes here. This is the larger
column with a width of only 30%. column with a width of 70%.
For more details please see the Column Macro and the Section Macro.
Advanced Formatting
To add colour and other formatting to your tables, you can use the Panel Macro within columns.
More table-formatting options may be available if your Confluence administrator has installed additional
macros.
Lists
Heading 1 Heading 2
• Item 1 1. Item 1
• Item 2 2. Item 2
• Item 3 3. Item 3
RELATED TOPICS
Paragraph break
An empty line produces a new paragraph. Most of the time, explicit paragraph breaks are not required -
Confluence will be able to paginate your paragraphs properly.
Line break
(\\)
Horizontal ruler
Make sure that the dashes are in a separate line from the text.
divided
by a horizontal ruler
RELATED TOPICS
Use the markup shown in the examples below to format the text in your pages.
~subscript~ subscript
{{monospaced}} monospaced
bq. Here's how you make text in a paragraph into a Here's how you make text in a paragraph
block quotation into a block quotation
{color:red}look ma, red text!{color} look ma, red text!
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence allows you to customise the 'look and feel' of an individual space on the Confluence instance
through options available in the Space Administration menu. By default, the look and feel of a space is
based on global settings configured from the Administration Console.
You need to be a space administrator to edit the look and feel of a space.
RELATED TOPICS
Browsing a space
Administrator's Guide - Design and Layout
Themes are created and installed from the Administration Console by site administrators. Once a theme
has been installed, a space administrator can then apply it to the space.
By default, no themes are applied and the look and feel of a space conforms to global look and feel
settings.
Confluence 2.6 introduced a fresh, clean look for the Default theme. If you prefer the original
Confluence look and feel, select the Confluence Classic Theme.
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click 'Themes' in the left panel under the heading 'Look and Feel'. This will bring up a new screen.
Any themes installed will be listed here. See screenshot below.
4. Click a radio button to select a theme.
5. Click 'Confirm'.
RELATED TOPICS
The Confluence logo 'Cannot resolve external resource into attachment.' is displayed in the user's browser
to identify the Confluence browser tab. To use a custom image for your Confluence site:
1. Obtain or create am image in PNG file format. For browser compatibility, it must be 32x32 pixel,
71x71 DPI and have 8 bit colour depth
2. In your Confluence install, find the ...\confluence\images\icons subdirectory
3. Backup the file favicon.png
4. Replace the favicon.png with your custom PNG image
5. Restart your application server
Users may need to clear their browser cache to view the new image.
In Confluence, you can replace the default logo for a space with a logo of your own choice.
The instructions below refer to global spaces. For your personal space, your profile picture is used as
the space icon.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page or beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on 'Change Space Logo' in the left panel under the heading 'Look and Feel'. This will bring up a
new screen. See screenshot below.
4. Use the browse option to locate the new logo and click 'Upload'.
RELATED TOPICS
Registered users of the site can choose the page to which they are directed after they log in to
Confluence. By default, users are directed to the Dashboard after logging in.
1. Click on the 'Preferences' link located at the top right-hand corner of the page.
2. Click the 'Edit Profile' tab.
3. Click 'General', under 'Preferences' on the left navigation bar.
4. From the drop-down menu beside Site Homepage, select a space. Note that only the list of spaces
to which you have 'view' access is displayed here. Selecting a space will direct you to its home page
when you log in.
5. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence allows you to customise the colour scheme of a space. By default, a space's colour scheme is
based on global settings configured from the Administration Console.
1. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab of the 'Browse Space' view. This tab is only displayed if you are a space
administrator.
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
2. Click 'Colour Scheme' in the left-hand panel under the heading 'Look and Feel'. This will bring up a
new screen.
3. Click the 'Select' button next to a colour scheme under 'Custom Colour Scheme' (if not already
selected).
4. Click the 'Edit' link. This will bring up a new screen. See screenshot below.
5. Enter standard HTML/CSS2 colour codes, or use the colour-picker
to choose a new colour
from the palette provided. Any changes you make will immediately be reflected in this space.
• Top Bar - the bar across the top of the page that contains the breadcrumbs
• Tab Navigation Background - the background colour of the tab navigation menus
• Tab Navigation Text - the text of the tab navigation menus
• Breadcrumbs Text - the breadcrumbs text in the top bar of the page
• Space Name Text - the text of the current space name located above the page title
• Heading Text - all heading tags throughout the space
• Links - all links throughout the space
• Borders and Dividers - table borders and dividing lines
• Tab Navigation Background Highlight - the background colour of the tab navigation menu when
highlighted
• Tab Navigation Text Highlight - the text of the tab navigation menu when highlighted
• Top Bar Menu Selected Background - the background colour of the top bar drop down menu when
selected
• Top Bar Menu Item - the text colour of the menu items in the top bar drop down menu
• Page Menu Selected Background - the background colour of the drop down page menu when
selected
• Page Menu Item Text - the text of the menu items in the drop down page menu
• Menu Item Selected Background - the background colour of the menu item when selected (applies
to both the top bar and page drop down menus)
• Menu Item Selected Text - the text colour of the menu item when selected (applies to both the top
bar and page drop down menus)
Please note that some UI elements are specific to the default theme and may not take affect for other
themes.
RELATED TOPICS
All Confluence UI text is contained in a single Java properties file. This file can be modified to change the
default text or translate Confluence into other languages than English.
\confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties
parameter.name=Parameter value
Parameter names are any text before the '=' character and should never be modified. Any text after the
'=' character is the parameter value, which can be modified freely and can also contain variables. An
example involving variables is:
popular.labels=The three most popular labels are {0}, {1} and {2}.
For more information on replacing values, check out Translating ConfluenceActionSupport Content. Note
that plugins store their text internally, so you must modify plugin text individually.
1. Stop Confluence
2. Under your install direcory, open \confluence\WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian\confluence
\core\ConfluenceActionSupport.properties
3. Search for the text you wish to modify, update the parameter value and save the file
4. Start Confluence
Common Modifications
Confluence provides a set of keyboard shortcuts. You could customise the shortcuts by making
modifications inside the ConfluenceActionSupport.properties file.
• To disable a particular shortcut, you can simply just comment out a respective line of code. One
may like to disable the shortcut to one of the navigation links: View, Edit, Attachments, Info . For
instance, to disable shortcut to Attachments one would comment out the following line:
#navlink.attachments.accesskey=a
• To modify an access key, one could simply just change the letter, bearing in mind the fact that the
letter must be unique.
Confluence is built on top of the Open Source SiteMesh library, a web-page layout system that provides a
consistent look and feel across a site. SiteMesh works through 'decorators' that define a page's layout and
structure.
To edit the layout of Confluence, you will need to modify these decorator files. A decorator file is a vmd
file and is written in a very simple programming language called Velocity. Learn more about Velocity.
Once you become familiar with Velocity, you can edit the decorator files to personalise the appearance of
Confluence.
You need to have System Administrator permissions in order to perform this function.
• You can customise the layouts for a particular space or for the whole site. This page tells you
how to customise layouts for a space. To customise the global layouts, use the 'Layout' menu
on the 'Administration' page.
• When you upgrade Confluence, you must reapply your custom layouts to the new default
layouts.
Site layouts : These are used to define the controls that surround each page in the site. For example, if
you want to make changes to the header and the footer, you will need to modify these layouts.
Content layouts : These control the appearance of content such as pages and news items: they don't
change the way the pages themselves are displayed, but they allow you to alter the way the surrounding
comments or attachments are shown.
Export Layouts: These control the appearance of spaces and pages when they are exported to HTML.
If you are using Confluence to generate a static website, for example, you will need to modify these
layouts.
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click the 'Layout' link in the left panel under the heading 'Look and Feel'. A list of the layouts for the
space is listed.
• Click 'View Default' to view the vmd file.
• Click 'Create Custom' to edit the default vmd file. This will open up the vmd file in edit mode.
Make changes and click 'Update'.
The Dashboard is the front page of a Confluence site. It provides an overview of the site, access to all
spaces to which you have 'view' permission, and displays a list of the most recently updated content
within them.
You can go to the Dashboard from any page on your site by clicking on the logo beside the page title or
via the Breadcrumbs (the "You are here" path) located at the top of every page.
1. The Welcome Message for the site, which is configured from the Administration Console.
2. A list of the spaces within the site to which you have access, presented via convenient tabs: 'My',
'Team', 'New' or 'All' spaces. See Customising the Dashboard.
3. A list of the most Recently Updated documents on the site from the spaces listed. For example, if
you click on the tab 'Team', the recently updated content from your team spaces will be listed here.
4. A list of your Favourite Pages. See Working with Favourites.
5. Useful links:
a.
— see Setting up a
New Global Space
b.
— see Using the RSS
Feed Builder
c.
— see Searching the
People Directory
The Dashboard is the only place in Confluence from where you can:
By default, the Dashboard is also the site homepage. However, you can set any other page in Confluence
as the homepage via the Space Admin tab or your User Profile settings.
Screenshot : Dashboard
Confluence Glossary
Confluence Icons
Working with Spaces Overview
You can customise the Dashboard to provide access to the content on the site that is most relevant to
you.
Here's how:
Once you add spaces as your favourites, you can click on the 'My' tab in the spaces section of the
Dashboard to view a list of only your favourite spaces. The 'Recently updated' section in this view will also
display content only from these spaces.
Team labels are used to group together related spaces. For example, you may want to group together
all spaces relating to a project team. Once you add team labels, you can click on the 'Team' tab in the
spaces section, select a team from the drop down menu, and have only the list of spaces pertaining to
that team displayed. The 'Recently updated' section in this view will also display content only from these
spaces.
The Dashboard remembers which one of the views, 'My', 'Team', 'All' or 'New' you were most recently
viewing. So if you clicked the 'My' tab on this visit, next time around, as soon as you log in to Confluence,
only the list of your favourite spaces and the recently modified content within them will be displayed to
you.
Whichever view you are in, the Dashboard will display a list of your five most recently added favourite
pages, so you can access those pages easily.
You can display an image from either a file attached to the Confluence page, or from another location.
This page shows you how to display an image using Confluence Notation, also known as Wiki Markup.
Instead of Wiki Markup, you can use the 'Insert Image' icon. This behaves in a similar way for both
the Wiki Markup and the Rich Text editor, as described in Inserting an image.
To follow the instructions below, you need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode.
Where 'Space Attachments Directory' is the name of the page containing the attachment.
Usage example
What if you want to upload an image only once, but display it on many pages?
• Attach the image to a page, such as our page called the 'Space attachments directory'.
• Link to the uploaded image using the syntax described above.
To view the image, the user needs to have view permission for the page to which it is attached.
!SPACE:my page^myimg.jpg!
Formatting an image
!fish.gif|alt="I am a fish"!
RELATED TOPICS
• ImageMap Plugin
• Other image and visualisation plugins
Confluence allows you to attach image files of any format to a page. However, your ability to display them
depends on the image file formats supported by the browser you are using.
Confluence supports the following image formats for its Thumbnail and Gallery macros :
• gif
• jpeg
• png
RELATED TOPICS
Displaying an Image
Thumbnail Macro
Gallery Macro
Confluence allows you to export a part of, or the entire contents of a space to HTML, PDF or XML.
RELATED TOPICS
Browsing a space
Confluence allows you to export a part of, or the entire contents of a space into a zipped archive of HTML
files. This is useful if you want convert your space into a static web site.
To export to HTML, you will need 'Export Space' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
To export to HTML,
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page or beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' Tab and click on 'Export Space' in the left panel.
3. Click the radio button to select HTML from the list of export options.
4. Check the box 'Include Comments' if you want to include comments for the pages you are
exporting.
5. Select the pages you want to export by checking the boxes in the tree view of pages displayed.
By default, all pages are selected. You have the option to 'Check All' or 'Clear All' pages. See
screenshot.
6. Click 'Export'. This will create a zipped archive of html files.
7. Extract the files into a folder.
• Page attachments are placed in individual folders named using the format :
'nameofpage_attachments'.
• By default, the 'Space Details' page is exported as index.html and displays the space's details as
well as a list of all available pages within it.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence to PDF
Confluence to XML
Confluence allows you to export a single page, a part of a space, or an entire space into a single PDF file.
You can export a single page in Confluence to PDF simply by clicking the pdf
icon located at the top of
each page below the Quick Search box.
If you wish to export particular pages or entire space, follow the instructions below.
To export to PDF, you will need 'Export Space' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
To export to PDF,
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click on 'Export Space' in the left panel.
3. Click the radio button to select PDF from the list of export options.
4. Check the box 'Include Comments' if you want to include the comments for the pages you are
exporting.
5. Select the pages you want to export by checking the boxes in the tree view of pages displayed.
By default, all pages are selected. You have the option to 'Check All' or 'Clear All' pages. See
screenshot.
6. Click 'Export'. This will create a zipped file of the PDF document.
7. Extract the zip file. Click on the PDF file to launch it.
Notes
Only image attachments which have been inserted into a page are included when exporting to PDF.
To export a PDF containing international text, you need to install a Unicode font in Confluence.
The PDF Documentation Generator is a free, third-party plugin that offers greater control over the content
hierarchy, layout and font styles of your PDF exports.
RELATED TOPICS
To export a Confluence page written in another language, you will first need to install the necessary font
for that language. This will basically involve uploading a font file to Confluence.
C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
Unix users
/usr/share/fonts
Microsofts True Type core fonts such as Verdana can be downloaded here http://
corefonts.sourceforge.net/
2. Copy the font file into a temporary folder (for example a folder on the Desktop)
3. Navigate to the Administration > PDF Language Support screen and upload the file
you copied in step one.
Please note the only font files supported are true type fonts and true type collections (file extensions
are *.ttf and *.ttc).
We recommend you to use Unicode font Verdana for correct character encoding and exporting to
pdf.
Confluence allows you to export a part of, or the entire contents of, a space into a zipped archive of XML
files.
This is useful if you want to make a backup of the space, export the space to another Confluence
instance, or use the data from the space in another application.
To export to XML, you will need 'Export Space' permission which is assigned by a space administrator.
See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more information.
To export to XML,
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page or beside the
space link on the Dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click 'Export Space' in the left-hand panel.
You will only see this link if you have the required permission.
3. Click the radio button to select XML from the list of export options.
4. Check the box 'Include Comments' if you want to include comments made on the pages you are
exporting.
5. Check 'Backup Attachments' if you want include the images and other files attached to the pages.
6. Select either 'All' or 'Visible to you'. These options are explained below:
Available in Confluence 2.7.1 and later.
• All — Export all content in the space, including pages that are protected by page-level
restrictions which will prevent you from viewing the pages themselves. This option is available
only to space administrators and Confluence administrators. It allows you to make a complete
and comprehensive export of a space for backup purposes.
• Visible to you — Export only content you can see. This is the default option.
7. If you choose 'Visible to you', you will then be able to select the pages you want to export. Check
the relevant boxes in the tree view of pages displayed. By default, all the pages are selected. You
have the option to 'Check All' or 'Clear All' pages.
8. Click 'Export'. This will create a zipped archive of XML files.
If you are running Confluence behind Apache and are facing timeout errors, please consider creating
the export directly from Tomcat, instead of going through Apache. This will speed up the process
and prevent timeouts.
RELATED TOPICS
Browsing a space
Restoring a Space
Confluence allows you to export a single page into a Word document. This is extremely useful for
emailing around content to non-Confluence users, printing a document or just creating a backup in Word.
You will require 'Export Pages' permission to export a page to a Word document.
Confluence stores all page data in Confluence's wiki markup syntax. Importing non-wiki markup into
Confluence requires a conversion process.
• Text with basic formatting can be pasted directly into the Rich Text Editor. This includes simple Word
documents or web pages.
• Files such as Microsoft Word and Excel documents can be imported using a Content Converter
• Confluence pages saved to disk can be Imported From Disk
• Convert a HTML file to a Confluence page using the HTML To Confluence Converter
• Embed an external web page into Confluence with the Html-include Macro
• Use HTML code in a page with the HTML Macro
Confluence allows you to import text files from a disk or a directory on the Confluence server, and convert
them into corresponding Confluence pages. Each file will be imported as a Confluence page with the same
name as the file.
The text file needs to contain Confluence markup to be converted accurately into a Confluence page.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on the 'Import pages from disk' link in the left panel under the heading 'Import'. This will
display a new screen.
4. Type in the directory's path in the 'Import directory' text field.
5. Check 'Trim file extensions' to remove file extensions when converting the files to Confluence
pages. Note that the Confluence pages will take their titles from the files' names (including their
extensions). So to avoid having page titles with the suffix 'txt' in them, make sure you check this
box.
6. Check 'Overwrite existing pages' if you want to replace existing Confluence pages with the same
page title.
7. Click 'Import'.
The ability to import pages from disk applies only to global spaces, so the 'Import' section in the
above screenshot does not appear in the 'Space Admin' tab for personal spaces. Please see Working
with Spaces Overview for information about the differences between global spaces and personal
spaces.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence provides the following keyboard shortcuts (please also see Modifier Keys below):
All Screens
Keystroke Action
Alt-S Search field
Login Screen
Keystroke Action
Alt-U Username field
Alt-P Password field
Alt-R Check 'Remember Me'
View Screen
Keystroke Action
Alt-V View Page Tab
Alt-E Edit Tab
Alt-A Attachments Tab
Alt-I Information Tab
Keystroke Action
Alt-A Add Page
Alt-P Preview Page
Keystroke Action
Alt-U Update Page
Alt-P Preview Page
Modifier Keys
The modifier key will differ with each operating system and browser. For example, when running Firefox
on Windows, you will need to type 'Alt' + 'Shift' + 'EP' to add a new page. The following table shows the
modifier keys for the various combinations:
Note: In Internet Explorer, links will only be highlighted by shortcut keys; you will need to press Enter
to proceed. Buttons, however, are activated through the shortcut.
RELATED TOPICS
The Rich Text editor provides users accustomed to html or other standard text editing applications, an
easier and faster way to creating Confluence pages. It allows you to enter content as you would in a Word
document, and apply formatting simply by clicking icons on a toolbar.
If you are loyal to wiki markup, you can continue to use it. The 'Edit' screen lets you switch between
'Rich Text' and 'Wiki Markup' edit modes without losing the changes you've made; so you can use a
combination of both while editing. For instance, you can use the rich text editor to change the text colour
and then switch to wiki markup to create links.
You can also default to either 'Wiki Markup' or 'Rich Text' depending on your preference.
Note
A site administrator will need to Enable Rich Text Editing from the Administration Console before you
can start using the Rich Text editor
RELATED TOPICS
With Confluence 2.0, users have the option of using Confluence's Rich Text editor to create pages. To
enable this option, a site administrator will need to turn on 'Rich Text Editing' from the Administration
Console.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to add a link to your Confluence page. A link, or hyperlink, is a word or phrase
which, when clicked, will direct the user to another web page or other location.
You can click the 'Insert Link' icon in either Wiki Markup mode or the Rich Text editor. The
functionality described below is basically the same for both editing modes.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to attach and insert an image, using the 'Insert Image' icon
You can click the 'Insert Image' icon in either Wiki Markup mode or the Rich Text editor. The
functionality described below is basically the same for both editing modes.
To insert an image,
2. This will open the 'Insert Image' window. If you have already attached images to the page, they will
be listed in the 'Insert Image' window.
3. If you want to attach a new image:
• Click the 'Browse' button.
• Select your file from your computer or your network.
• Click the 'Attach' button.
4. If you want to display an image attached to the page, click one of the attached images. The image
name will appear in the 'Filename' text box.
5. If you want to display a remote image, enter the URL in the 'File Name' text box.
6. If you want the Confluence page to display a smaller version of your image rather than the full-
size image, click the 'Thumbnail' checkbox. This will also hyperlink the image - if the user clicks the
image, a new window will open displaying the full-size image.
7. If you want to control the placement of the image on the page, select a value from the 'Alignment'
dropdown list. Available values are 'None' (i.e. default), 'Left', 'Centre' and 'Right'.
8. Click 'OK' to insert the image on the Confluence page.
To insert an emoticon,
1.
Click on the toolbar.
This will pop up the emoticons window.
2. Select the emoticon to insert it.
Screenshot : Emoticons
RELATED TOPICS
To insert a symbol,
1.
Click on the toolbar.
This will pop up the 'Custom Characters' window.
2. Click on the symbol to insert it.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to add a link which points to a file attached to your Confluence page. A link, or
hyperlink, is a word or phrase which, when clicked, will open the attachment.
You can click the 'Insert Link' icon in either Wiki Markup mode or the Rich Text editor. The
functionality described below is basically the same for both editing modes.
To link to an attachment,
Read about creating new links for more information on the 'Link Properties' window.
RELATED TOPICS
To link to an image,
1.
Click on the toolbar.
This will open the 'Link Properties' window.
2. Go to the 'Attachments' tab. All attachments are listed. Click the image name to select it, and then
click 'OK'.
3. To attach a new image, 'Browse' to select your file and click 'Attach'.
RELATED TOPICS
1.
Click on the toolbar.
This will open up the 'Link Properties' window.
2. Click on one of these tabs: 'History' or 'Recently Modified' to select the page you want to link to.
or
Do a 'Search' for the page using the search facility and select a page from the search results.
3. Click 'OK'
1.
Click on the toolbar.
This will open up the 'Link Properties' window.
2. Click on 'External Links' tab.
3. Enter the URL of the webpage in the text-entry field and click 'Insert'
RELATED TOPICS
To create a table,
1.
Click on the toolbar.
This will pop up a window.
2. Enter the number of columns and rows for your table.
3. Check the box if you want a heading style applied to the first row of the table.
4. Click 'Insert'.
Delete row
Delete column
RELATED TOPICS
The Rich Text editor supports most text effects available in standard text editing applications.
To apply an effect, select the text and click on the icon, or use the shortcut key.
Italics ctrl+i
Underline ctrl+u
Strike
Heading Heading 5
RELATED TOPICS
The fastest way to find what you are looking for in Confluence is to do a site search. Confluence will
search all content, including attachments.
Quick Search
The Quick Search feature makes it possible for you to search Confluence wherever you happen to be in
the site. The Quick Search box is located at the top right hand corner of every screen. Simply type in
your query and click the search button.
By default, Confluence will search all content (except mail) in all global spaces, and display the results in
a new screen. Here are the results of searching for 'Confluence' :
Screenshot : Search results for 'Confluence'
For each result, the title of the content item, the space to which it belongs, its author and the date of
its last modification are presented. The first two lines from the item are also displayed to give you an
indication of its content.
Only search results from spaces you have permission to view will be displayed.
See Confluence Search Syntax for more ways to use the search box.
Advanced Search
If you are using Confluence Hosted, you cannot search user profiles or the People Directory. Read more
about the feature limitations in Confluence Hosted.
When you do a Quick Search, the Advanced Search facility is displayed along with the results.
• Location - Search within a particular space, or within Favourites, Personal Spaces, Global Spaces or
All Spaces.
• Group by - Decide how you want the results are grouped: by 'content type' or by 'space'.
• Type - Decide which of the 'content types' you want to search.
• Date - Search by 'date' of modification.
Searching Attachments
• Word
• Text
• Powerpoint
• Excel
• PDF
• HTML
To search other types of attachments, you will need to use Attachment content extractor plugins
----
RELATED TOPICS
This document intends to give programmers and advanced users of Confluence an overview over the
lucene search fields used in Confluence.
Field searches
Confluence data is stored in fields which can be specified in the search. To search a specific field, type the
name of the field followed by a colon ":" and then the term you are looking for.
title:"Some Title"
labelText:chalk
The field is only valid for the term directly preceeding the colon. The following query will only find "Some"
in the title field and will search for Title in the default fields.
title:Some Title
Pages News
Attachments Mails
Searching Syntax
Here's how you can refine your search. Confluence will ignore common words like "the" unless you place
your query within quotes.
To search for content that contains the exact phrase "chalk and cheese"
Or Search
To search for content that contains one of the terms, "chalk" OR "cheese"
chalk OR cheese
And SearchTo search for content that contains both the terms "chalk" AND "cheese"
Not searchTo search for content that contains "chalk" but NOT "cheese"
Excluded Term searchSimilar to the NOT search, to search for content that contains "chalk" and "butter"
but NOT "cheese"
Grouping SearchTo search for content that MUST contain "chalk" but CAN contain either "cheese" or
"butter" use the search:
Title SearchTo search for content with "chalk" in its title, where title is the field keyword.
title:chalk
b?tter
chick*
Wildcards can be used anywhere within a word, except at the very beginning.
For example:
Mutliple characters
c*c*
You can also combine search characters to get the exact word. For example the search term below will
return "chic" yet not "chickpea":
c*c?
Proximity searches This search ensure that the two words specified must be within a certain number of
words of each other to be included.
"octagon post"~1
"octagon post"~0
Range search
Searches for names that fall alphabetically within the specifed range.
[adam to ben]
Note: You can't use the AND keyword inside this statement.
Fuzzy search
octogan~
Combined search
RELATED TOPICS
Searching Confluence
Confluence Search Fields
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
The People Directory displays a list of people who use your Confluence site.
The People Directory includes anybody who has logged into Confluence or who has had a user account
created for them in Confluence. The People Directory does not include users who can log into Confluence
via external user management who have never logged in.
icon :
The Confluence administrator can hide the People Directory. If it is hidden, you will not see the link on
the Dashboard.
• If the 'Personal Space' icon appears beneath a person's name, clicking that person's name (or their
picture) will take you to their personal space.
• If the 'Personal Space' icon does not appear beneath a person's name, clicking that person's name
(or their picture) will display their user profile.
• To search everyone who uses your Confluence site, click the 'All People' link.
• To add a person to your Favourite People, click the grey star icon
• To remove a person from your Favourite People, click the yellow star icon
Once you have added a person to your Favourite People, their personal space (if they have one) will be
added to your list of favourite spaces on the Dashboard.
The People Directory uses the hCard microformat for simple integration with a variety of
microformat-enabled tools. hCard is an open data format for representing people, companies,
organisations, and places. Read more about microformats and hCard.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence splits the text of content into tokens, and then filters and modifies those tokens according to
the following rules.
Tokenization
This uses the Lucene Standard Tokenizer. This splits the text into tokens thus:
• Splits words at punctuation characters, removing punctuation. However, a dot that's not followed by
whitespace is considered part of a token.
• Splits words at hyphens, unless there's a number in the token, in which case the whole token is
interpreted as a product number and is not split.
• Recognizes email addresses and internet hostnames as one token.
Note that this means that the string 'foo-bar5' won't be split into 'foo' and 'bar5', so a search for 'bar5' or
'bar*' will not find any results.
Filtering
Confluence then removes "'s" from the ends of words and removes the dots from acronyms, i.e. I.B.M.
becomes IBM. Everything is converted to lower case and common words like 'the' and 'or' are removed.
Finally words are stemmed, so that 'fishing' and 'fishes', for example, both become 'fish'.
Confluence gives you the choice to make the site as open or as closed as you wish. Here are some
points to consider:
• As a tool for communication and collaboration, Confluence is at its best when all your users can
participate fully.
• So it's advisable not to restrict users unless you have a good reason for doing so.
• Confluence keeps a history of all changes to pages and other content. So it is easy to see who
has changed what, and to reverse any edits if required.
Levels of Permission
Global Permissions
Global permissions are site-wide permissions, and are assigned by administrators. Confluence allows two
levels of administrator permissions :
• System Administrator - Users with this permission can perform all the Confluence administrative
functions.
• Confluence Administrator - Users with this permission can perform most of the Confluence
administrative functions, but excluding those functions which could compromise the security of the
Confluence system.
Users with 'System Administrator' or 'Confluence Administrator' permission can assign permissions to
other users. For full details, please refer to the overview of global permissions in the Administrator's
Guide.
Space Permissions
The permission to create a new space or to administer one is granted by a Confluence Administrator from
the global Administration Console.
Every space has its own independent set of permissions. These permissions determine the access settings
for different users of the space. In order to assign these permissions to other users, a user must be a
space administrator i.e. must have the 'Admin' permission for that space.
See Users and Groups to learn how these permissions are assigned.
Page Restrictions
You can set page-level restrictions, if you have the 'Restrict Pages' permission within the space
concerned.
Page restrictions allow you to control who can view or edit individual pages. To set page restrictions, edit
the page and use the page restriction options below the text-entry box.
More Information
How do space permissions and page restrictions work together?
Example: In the HR (Human Resources) space, everyone in the organisation has the 'View' space
permission, but only the HR team has the 'Pages --> Create' space permission (i.e. the ability to create
and edit pages in the space). A member of the HR team starts to create a new page called 'Annual Leave
Policy'. Because the page is not yet finished, she sets the 'Viewing' page restriction so that only the HR
team can view the page. When the page is finished, she will remove the 'Viewing' restriction so that
everyone in the company can see the page.
Space permissions and page restrictions affect how links between pages are displayed to a visitor:
• if the link points to a page in a space to which the visitor does not have 'View' space permission, the
link will not be rendered at all.
• if the visitor has 'View' space permission, but page restrictions prohibit her from viewing the page,
the link will be rendered but an 'Access Denied' message will be displayed when she clicks the link.
• if the visitor has 'View' space permission, and is not restricted from viewing the page, the link will
display and behave as normal.
• if the visitor does not have permission to view the page to which the attachment is attached, the
link will not be rendered.
Warning
If you misconfigure a space so that nobody has access to administer it any more, you will need to
have someone in the 'confluence-administrators' group fix the permissions for you.
RELATED TOPICS
• 'Restrict Pages' permission in the space to which the page belongs (since page restrictions operate
within the bounds of space permissions).
• Permission to edit the page itself. That is, if a user is prevented from editing a page through page
restrictions, they are also prevented from changing the restrictions themselves.
Users can only view page or space content for which they (or a group they are in) have 'View' permission.
Pages that a user does not have 'View' access to are referred to as 'inaccessible' pages. Visit Inaccessible
Page to see how Confluence deals with pages a user cannot view:
It is not possible to conceal the existence of pages, though you can restrict 'View' access to page content.
To keep the existence of a page or space secret, do not link to it from other sources.
Users will still be able to find the page if they know it's URL. But they will not be able to view the
content if they don't have the correct permissions.
If a page has its 'View' restriction set, that restriction will be inherited by all its children (and their
children, and so on). If a 'View' restriction is added to a page that has already inherited page restrictions
from its parent, users must satisfy both restrictions in order to see the page.
Consider the page 'Documents', with a child page 'Executive', which itself has a child page 'Payroll'. To
begin with, anyone who can view the space to which these pages belong can see all three pages.
For security reasons, 'View' restrictions are set on the 'Executive' page, restricting it to the 'mycompany-
management group'. At this point, anyone can still see the 'Documents' page, but you must be in the
'mycompany-management group' in order to view either 'Executive' or 'Payroll'.
Since 'Payroll' information is considered particularly private, the 'Payroll' page then has its page
restrictions set to only allow members of the 'mycompany-financial' group to view it. At this point, anyone
can see the 'Documents' page, only members of 'mycompany-management' can see 'Executive', and only
users who are members of both the 'mycompany-management' and 'mycompany-financial' groups can
view 'Payroll'.
Administrators
• Space administrators are responsible for the management of a space and its contents. They
therefore have the ability to remove all restrictions from a page (as described in 'Viewing
Restricted Pages'). This means that space administrators can view and edit all content in the
space.
• Users who are members of the 'confluence-administrators' group ('super-users') can view all
pages regardless of the page restrictions. To be able to edit the page, you will need to remove
the restriction from it first – go to 'Space Administration' > 'Restricted Pages'.
You cannot exclude yourself
As creator or editor of a page, you cannot use page restrictions to deny yourself access to the page.
Confluence will automatically add your username into the list of users/groups allowed to view/edit
the page. If you remove your username, Confluence will put it back again.
RELATED TOPICS
This page is intentionally restricted to viewing by the 'documentation' group only. We use it for
demonstration purposes, to show what happens if someone tries to view a restricted page. For example,
'Page Restrictions' links to this page.
Page restrictions control who may view or edit a specific page, within the bounds of the space
permissions. This gives the space administrator control over who can access their space, and within that
the page editor can control access to the page.
• Viewing restrictions make the page invisible to everyone except the chosen users/groups.
• Editing restrictions prevent everyone except the chosen users/groups from editing the page.
You can choose as many users/groups as you like. (Note: prior to Confluence version 2.5, page
restrictions could only be applied to a single person or group.)
In order to set or modify page restrictions, you need to have the 'Restrict Pages' permission in the
space to which the page belongs, as well as permission to edit the page itself.
'User Search' popup. Type the 'Full Name', 'Email' or 'User Name' (or just part of the
name), then click the 'Search' button to display a list of matching users. Select the
appropriate user(s), then click the 'Select user(s)' button. (Read more about the User
Search.)
° Type the user's name (or a list of names, separated by commas) into the 'Enter user/
'Group Search' popup. Type part of the name, then click the 'Search' button to display a
list of matching groups, e.g. to search for groups whose names start with 'finance', type
'finance'. Select the appropriate group(s), then click the 'Select group(s)' button.
° Type the group name (or a list of groups, separated by commas) into the 'Enter user/
Note
View and edit restrictions apply to all users including space administrators. However, space
administrators can remove any restriction on a page. See Viewing Restricted Pages.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to use the 'User Search' window, which appears when you are setting page
restrictions or assigning space permissions.
Search syntax
The search is not case-sensitive. You can enter either upper- or lower-case text.
You can use an asterisk '*' as a wild card when entering user details. The search will allow one or
more characters to match the asterisk.
For example:
• Enter jon* to retrieve all the following: 'Jon Bloggs', 'Jon Smith' and 'Jonathan Jones', etc
• Enter *bloggs to retrieve all the following: 'James Jon Bloggs', 'Joe Bloggs', 'Jon Bloggs' and
'Richard Bloggs', etc
• Enter *jon* to retrieve all the following: 'James Jon Bloggs', 'Jon Bloggs', 'Jon Smith' and
'Jonathan Jones', etc
1. To access the 'User Search' window, click the 'Choose users' link when setting page restrictions, or
the icon on the space
permissions screen.
2. The 'User Search' window will appear, as shown below.
3. To search for a particular user:
• Select the 'User Details' radio button.
• Complete one or more of the following fields. You can use wild cards as described above.
° Full Name - the person's name, e.g. 'Joe Bloggs', or '*Bloggs', or 'Joe*'.
° Email - email address, e.g. '*acme*'
° Username - the person's username, e.g. '*joe*', or '*Bloggs'.
Note: a page's restrictions can only be viewed when the page is in 'Edit' mode. This means that you can
only view a page's restrictions if you have permission to edit the page.
RELATED TOPICS
All site administrative functions are performed from the Administration Console. You need to have System
Administrator or Confluence Administrator permissions to access the Administration Console.
Please refer to the overview of global permissions in the Administrator's Guide for full details.
RELATED TOPICS
A space administrator is a user with the 'Space Admin' permission for a space. This permission itself is
assigned from the Space Administration screens by a space administrator.
• A user who has the 'Administer Confluence' permission is not automatically a space
administrator for a particular space. In order for them to be a space administrator, they must
belong to a group which has space administration rights on the space, or their username must
be specifically granted space administration rights on the space.
• Users who are members of the 'confluence-administrators' group do automatically have space
administration permissions for all spaces.
Refer to the Administrator's Guide for more details about Confluence administrator permissions.
• view all content in the space. If there are page permissions that restrict the viewing of a page to a
single user, or to a group to which the space administrator doesn't belong, a space administrator can
still view the page by removing the restriction.
• edit all content on any page in the space.
• remove restrictions from any page in the space (using the Space Administration interface).
• grant themselves any other space permissions (e.g. permission to set restrictions on a particular
page).
All space administration functions are performed from the 'Space Admin' tab under the 'Browse Space'
view of a space. You need to be a space administrator to access the Space Administration screens.
RELATED TOPICS
If you are using Confluence Hosted, anonymous visitors cannot access your site. Read more about the
feature limitations in Confluence Hosted.
Space permissions can only be granted by a space administrator. A space administrator has permission to
do anything in the space regardless of any other setting.
Permissions can be assigned to any group, to any individual user in the Confluence-User group, and to
users in the Anonymous group.
These are the different permissions that can be assigned at the space level:
• View: user can view this space's content, including the space's details, and its pages and news items
(blog posts)
• Pages:
° Create - user may create and edit pages in this space.
° Export - user may export pages in this space.
° Restrict - user may apply page level permissions.
° Remove - user may remove pages in this space.
• Comments:
° Create - user may make comments in this space.
° Remove - user may remove comments from this space.
• Attachments:
° Create - user may add attachments in this space.
° Remove - user may remove attachm\ents from this space.
• Mail:
° Remove - user may delete individual mail items.
• Space:
° Export - user may export content from this space.
° Admin - user has administrative permissions over this space.
Warning
If you deny all administrative access to a space by mistake, so that nobody has access to administer
the space any more, you will need to ask someone in the confluence-administrators group to fix the
permissions for you.
RELATED TOPICS
These are the different permissions that can be assigned at the space level:
• View: user can view this space's content, including the space's details, and its pages and news items
(blog posts)
• Pages:
° Create - user may create and edit pages in this space.
° Export - user may export pages in this space.
° Restrict - user may apply page level permissions.
° Remove - user may remove pages in this space.
• Comments:
° Create - user may make comments in this space.
° Remove - user may remove comments from this space.
• Attachments:
° Create - user may add attachments in this space.
° Remove - user may remove attachm\ents from this space.
• Mail:
° Remove - user may delete individual mail items.
• Space:
° Export - user may export content from this space.
° Admin - user has administrative permissions over this space.
Warning
If you deny all administrative access to a space by mistake, so that nobody has access to administer
the space any more, you will need to ask someone in the confluence-administrators group to fix the
permissions for you.
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click the 'Permissions' link in the left-hand panel under the heading 'Security'. This will display the
space's current permissions assigned to the different groups and users.
4. Click the 'Edit Permissions' button.
5. The 'Edit Space Permissions' screen appears, as shown below.
° In the 'Group Search' window, enter all or part of the group name. You can use an
asterisk '*' as a wild card.
° The 'User Search' window will appear. The user search is the same as is used when
applying page restrictions.
° Check the boxes to select the required user(s).
° Click the 'Select User(s)' button. The username(s) will appear in the 'Grant browse
If you are using Confluence Hosted, anonymous visitors cannot access your site. Read more about the
feature limitations in Confluence Hosted.
1. Access the 'Edit Space Permissions' screen as described above. The Anonymous Access section
shows the space permissions granted to all anonymous users of the site.
• To assign permissions, check the box for the required permission.
• To deny a permission, uncheck the relevant box.
2. Click 'Save All' to apply the permissions.
You cannot grant space 'Admin' rights or Page 'Restrict' rights to anonymous users.
In Confluence 2.7.2 and later, Confluence will let you know if there is a problem with some
permissions. In rare situations, you may see the following error messages below a permission:
• 'User/Group not found' — This message may appear if your LDAP repository is unavailable, or if
the user/group has been deleted after the permission was created.
• 'Case incorrect. Correct case is: xxxxxx' — This message may appear if the upper/lower case
in the permission does not match the case of the username or group name. If you see a
number of occurrences of this message, you should consider running the routine supplied to fix
the problem.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for that space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on the 'Permissions' link in the left panel under the heading 'Security'. This will display the
space's current permissions assigned to the different groups and users.
4. Click 'Edit permissions'. This will bring up a new screen. See screenshot.
5. Uncheck the permissions you which to revoke. Removing the 'View' permission for a user or group
will remove all access to that space for the user or group.
6. Click 'Save All' to apply the permissions.
RELATED TOPICS
You need to be a space administrator to view the permissions assigned for a space.
Below is an example. The ticks in the boxes indicate which permissions have been granted. The crosses
indicate which permissions have been denied.
Screenshot : Viewing space permissions
In Confluence 2.7.2 and later, Confluence will let you know if there is a problem with some
permissions. In rare situations, you may see the following error messages below a permission:
• 'User/Group not found' — This message may appear if your LDAP repository is unavailable, or if
the user/group has been deleted after the permission was created.
• 'Case incorrect. Correct case is: xxxxxx' — This message may appear if the upper/lower case
in the permission does not match the case of the username or group name. If you see a
number of occurrences of this message, you should consider running the routine supplied to fix
the problem.
RELATED TOPICS
New users are created by a Confluence administrator via the Administration Console.
A Confluence administrator can also group users together into user groups for more convenient
administration. This means that any permissions you assign at the site, space and page levels can be
assigned to a whole group. A user in one of these groups will automatically be granted all permissions
granted to the group.
• Confluence-Administrators - This is a 'super-group' and a user from this group has permission to do
anything in the site regardless of any other setting.
• Confluence-Users - This is the default group into which all new users are assigned. Permissions you
assign to this group will be assigned to all newly signed-up users of Confluence.
Anonymous Users
Confluence treats all users who do not log in when they access Confluence as being 'Anonymous'.
Administrators can assign permissions to this group separately.
When a user is assigned more than one permission, the most powerful permission will prevail.
Further explanation:
• A user may be assigned a permission specifically to their username. They may also be assigned
a permission by belonging to a group, or even several groups.
• The user will then be able to perform all functions assigned to them.
• So if a user is allowed to do something over and above what the group can do, the user will
be able to do it. And if the group is allowed to do something over and above the specific
permissions granted to the user, the user will still be able to do it.
RELATED TOPICS
Restricted pages are pages that have 'View' or 'Edit' restrictions applied to them through page-level
permissioning .
You need to be a space administrator to view the list of restricted pages in a space.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page or beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on 'Restricted Pages' in the left panel under the heading 'Security'.
A list of all restricted pages in the space is displayed.
4.
Click on the 'lock' icon
to remove restrictions for the page.
Here's an example:
RELATED TOPICS
By default, Confluence backs up all data and attachments once a day to a backup file. These files are
called XML site backups, stored in the backups directory of Confluence home. You can also create XML
site backups manually.
XML site backups are fine for most instances of Confluence. However, large instances of Confluence will
find backups may become slow to create and use large amounts of disk space.
XML site backups are unsuitable for instances of Confluence that contain hundreds of large pages, as
XML backups take progressively longer to complete as the amount of text increases. Another issue with
XML site backups is that Confluence instances with a gigabytes of attachments will consume disk space
rapidly. This is because each site backup contains all content needed for a site restore. For example,
if a 1 gig instance of Confluence is backed up daily, it will create 30 gig of backups per month if left
unattended. When administering a large instance, you can reduce disk space by setting XML site backups
to exclude attachments, then manually scheduling a backup of your attachments from the Confluence
home directory or database. The backup manager can save space by saving changed files instead of all
content.
Creation Delay is the time it takes to create an XML site backup minus attachments.
Disk Usage can be estimated by multiplying the frequency of your XML site backups by their current size.
Manual Backups
Confluence's attachment storage configuration can be set to store attachments in the Confluence home
directory, or in the database.
Database Backup
Use your Database Administration Tool to create a backup of your Confluence database. if your database
is storing your attachments, importing this later will restore all content.
Attachment Backup
If stored on the filesystem, attachments are placed under the attachments directory of your Confluence
home directory. Copy this directory to create a backup of all attachments.
To restore from these backups, please refer to Restoring Data from other Backups.
Backup FAQ
Windows users must manually delete any backup files. Linux users can insert a nightly or weekly
automation script or cron similar to the following:
ls -t <path to your backup dir>/* | tail +6 | xargs -i rm {}
There is a minor slowdown every time the backup is performed, usually nightly between 2am and about
2.10am. If the performance hit is significant, you can switch to an external backup process for large
instances.
Switch to a manual backup process according to the 'Backups For Large Instances' section of Site Backup
and Restore, which will give you more control over disk usage.
Yes, as long as the attachments have been backed up are the same time. Refer to Site Backup and
Restore.
This page contains attachments (images etc) used on other pages in the Confluence documentation
space.
Confluence can backup all the content, comments and attachments for a space. The process involves
converting the data in the space into XML format. The end product is a zip file that contains XML file(s)
and optionally, all the attachments in the space. To transfer this data to another Confluence site, you
simply restore this zip file.
Instructions on how to restore or import the backup of a space can be found here.
Here's how you can keep track of changes to a single page, an entire space, or to all spaces on your site.
RELATED TOPICS
Managing Watches
Viewing History of a Page
Viewing Space Activity
The 'Watches' tab under your 'Preferences' settings displays a list of all pages and spaces you are
currenty watching. You will be sent email notifications when changes are made to your watched pages
and spaces.
1. Click on the 'Preferences' link (or 'Profile' link, in Confluence versions prior to 2.3) located below the
breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
2. Go to the 'Watches' tab. This lists the pages and spaces you are currently watching. Click the trash
icon beside any unwanted watches to remove them.
3. Go to the 'Edit Profile' tab, then click the 'Email' link.
4. Check the 'Notify on my actions' box if you want Confluence to include your own actions in your
notifications for your watches. Deselect this if you do not want to be notified of your own actions.
Note that this option only applies to your watches and not to the Daily Report .
5. Use the 'Email Format' drop-down menu to choose whether you want to receive your notifications
as HTML or plain text. Note that this will apply to the Daily Report as well as to your notifications for
watches.
RELATED TOPICS
Watching a Space
Watching a Page
Subscribing to Daily Email Reports
Tracking Updates Overview
User Profile Overview
When you subscribe to the daily report, you will be sent an email with a summary report of changes in all
spaces visible to you.
1. Click on the 'Preferences' link (or 'Profile' link, in Confluence versions prior to 2.3) located below the
breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
2. Go to the 'Edit Profile' tab.
3. Click the 'Email' link in the left-hand column.
4. Check the box beside 'Subscribe to daily updates'.
5. From the 'Email Format' drop down menu, select whether you want to receive your notifications as
HTML or plain text. This will apply to all your email notifications, including your watches.
6. Click 'Save'.
Here is an example:
RELATED TOPICS
RSS feeds allow you to track updates to content within Confluence. You will need an RSS newsreader to
subscribe to them.
You can create a customised RSS feed using the RSS Feed Builder ( recommended) or subscribe to one
of the pre-specified feeds generated by Confluence.
• Create and subscribe to customised RSS feeds using the RSS Feed Builder
— create a customised
RSS feed (e.g. filter your feed using a label; specify the number of items and days to include in your
feed; etc.)
RSS Newsreaders
The following are some popular RSS newsreader programs for various operating systems. You can find a
more comprehensive list on Google's open directory
Windows
• SharpReader
• NewsGator
• Syndirella
• FeedDemon
• NewzCrawler
Mac OS X
• Safari
• NetNewsWire
• NewsFire
• Shrook
Multi-Platform
RELATED TOPICS
If you want to customise your Confluence RSS feed (e.g. use a label to filter your feed), use the RSS
Feed builder instead.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the the top of every page and
beside the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click on 'RSS Feeds'.
3. Copy and paste the link for one of the following feeds into your RSS newsreader:
• Pages
• News
• Mail
• Comments
• Attachments
• All content
4. To have your newsreader log into Confluence, you can add your username and password to the feed
URL. But please note that if you do this, someone with access to your RSS newsreader configuration
can read your password.
To subscribe to RSS feeds generated by Confluence, for a particular page (where available)
1. Locate the following icon, which is available in the top-right corner of certain pages:
2. Copy and paste the icon's link into your RSS newsreader.
3. To have your newsreader log into Confluence, you can add your username and password to the feed
URL. But please note that if you do this, someone with access to your RSS newsreader configuration
can read your password.
RELATED TOPICS
Using the RSS feed builder, you can create customised RSS feeds to subscribe to changes within
Confluence.
When you watch a page, you are notified by email whenever the page is modified.
• page edits (unless the "Minor change" checkbox is ticked before saving) or page deletion
• attachments (including new versions of an existing attachment or deletions of an existing
attachment)
• comments (including new comments, edits of existing comments or deletions of existing
comments).
Note: You will not receive notifications when page content changes simply due to the output of a
macro.
For example: The output of the {children} macro will change if someone adds a child page. The page
when displayed will show the new child page. But the page content itself has not been edited, so no
notifications will be sent.
1. Go to the page.
2. Click the 'Watch Page' icon
located
at the top of the screen. This will be replaced with the 'Stop Watching Page' icon
.
1. Go to the page.
2. Click the 'Stop watching Page' icon
located at the top of the screen. This link will be replaced the 'Watch Page' icon
.
Here is an example:
Handy Hint
You can manage your watches via the Notifications tab under your user profile settings.
Watching a Space
Managing Watches
Tracking Updates Overview
Browsing a space
Updating Email Address
When you watch a space, you are notified by email whenever content is added to it or updated.
Handy Hint
You can also stop watching a space via the Watches tab under user profile settings.
RELATED TOPICS
Watching a Page
Managing Watches
Tracking Updates Overview
Browsing a space
Updating Email Address
An RSS feed is a format for delivering summaries of regularly changing web content. Subscribing to an
RSS feed allows you to stay informed of the latest content from sites that you are interested in.
RSS isn't designed to be read in a regular web browser. Specialised RSS newsreader programs can check
RSS files every so often, and tell you what's new on a site. Your reader may be on a website, an addon to
your browser, part of your email program, or a stand-alone program.
• Confluence generates its own RSS feeds for tracking updates to content within Confluence. You will
need an RSS reader which can grab the RSS feeds from Confluence and display them for you.
• Confluence's RSS macro allows you to display the contents of RSS feeds on a Confluence page. The
feeds may come from a Confluence feed generator or from external sites. In this way, Confluence
can act as an RSS reader.
For a technical description of RSS, read Mark Pilgrim's "What is RSS?" article on XML.com.
RELATED TOPICS
The instructions below apply to feeds coming from Confluence. To log in to external blogs, you will
need to know the specific parameters to include in the URL. The terms 'os_username' and 'os_password'
are specific to Confluence.
• If you are using a newsreader, anyone with access to your RSS newsreader configuration can
read your password.
• If you are embedding your feed on a Confluence page, you will include your username and
password in the text of the page. Your password will be visible to anyone who can edit the
page or view the source of the page.
Example:
Below is an example of a Confluence feed URL. In the example, the username is 'Firstname Lastname'
and the password is 'realpassword'. (Ignore the line-breaks in the example - we added them because the
URL is too long to display comfortably on the page.)
You can find more information here, and a URL translation function here.
Examples:
RELATED TOPICS
Click on the 'Preferences' link (or 'Profile' link, for Confluence versions prior to 2.3) located at the top of
every page below the 'breadcrumbs' to view your user profile.
View Profile:
Edit Profile:
Labels:
Watches:
• view a list of the pages and spaces you are currently watching.
Drafts:
Additionally, if you haven't yet set up your personal space, a 'Create Personal Space' link will be available.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click on the 'Preferences' link (or 'Profile' link, in Confluence versions prior to 2.3) located below the
breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
2. Click on the 'Edit Profile' tab.
3. Click the 'Password' link in the left-hand column.
4. Enter your current password and your new password in the form displayed.
5. Click 'Save' to save your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
You can customise Confluence by choosing your site preferences — homepage, language and (in
Confluence version 2.3 and later) timezone.
1. Click on the 'Preferences' link (or 'Profile' link, in Confluence versions prior to 2.3) located below the
breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
2. Click on the 'Edit Profile' tab.
3. In the left-hand column, click the 'General' link (under 'Preferences').
4. Choose your preferences in the form that is displayed.
• Site homepage — choose the page that you would like to see whenever you login to
Confluence.
• Preferred language — choose your language.
• Timezone — choose your timezone.
5. Click 'Save' to save your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
Your User Profile contains basic information about you. If you do not have a personal space, your User
Profile will be displayed when your name is clicked in the People Directory.
1. Click the 'Preferences' link (or 'Profile' link, in Confluence versions prior to 2.3) located below the
breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
2. Click the 'Edit Profile' tab. Enter details about yourself in the form that is displayed.
• Full Name - enter your name as you would like it to appear in your profile.
• Email - specify your email address which will be used when sending you mail notifications.
• Information about me - Enter information about yourself that other users can view (such as
your professional information, hobbies, and other interests). You can use Confluence markup in
this field.
Note that your Username cannot be changed.
3. Click 'Save' to save your changes.
To set your preferred language, click the 'General' link. The General Preferences page will appear.
Screenshot : Edit profile
Handy Hint
Confluence administrators can configure Confluence to mask email addresses (e.g. 'example at
atlassian dot com'), protecting your email address from search engine spiders and the like.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence can mask the email addresses of users to protect them from mail spammers.
This is done by a Confluence administrator and is configured through the Administration Console. The
Confluence administrator has three options for email address privacy:
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to create a link to a user's personal space (or user profile).
You can link to a user's personal space (or user profile) easily if you know their username.
If the user does not have a personal space, then the link will go to their user profile.
RELATED TOPICS
The email address you specify in your profile settings is used for your mail notifications and is also
displayed in your profile description.
1. Click on the 'Profile' link located below the breadcrumbs at the top of your page.
2. Go to the 'Edit Profile' tab. This will bring up a form.
3. Enter your new email address in the 'Email' textbox.
4. Click 'Update'.
RELATED TOPICS
Changing Password
Editing User Profile
Your profile picture is used as the icon for your personal space, to represent you in the People Directory,
and to illustrate your comments.
You may upload your own profile picture, or use one of the images provided by Confluence. If you upload
your own profile picture, it will be resized to 48x48 pixels.
1. Click the 'Preferences' link located below the breadcrumbs at the top of the page. This will display
your profile.
4. Either:
a. Click the 'Browse' button to locate your picture, then click the 'Upload' button to upload a
picture from your computer or file server.
Or:
b. Select one of the icons provided.
The current version of Confluence does not allow you to remove a profile picture once you have
uploaded it. See JIRA issue CONF-5885. If you are keen on this improvement, please do cast your
vote to increase its popularity, and add a comment to the issue to voice your opinion. You can add
yourself as a watcher of the issue to get any future updates.
To view your user profile, click on the 'Preferences' link located at the top right of the page.
Profile Description - information you have entered about yourself and a photograph if you have included
one. See Screenshot 1.
RELATED TOPICS
Overview of Spaces
Overview of Pages
An attachment is any file that is included with your page. Images, word documents, presentations, PDFs,
multimedia and sound files are some examples of attachments.
Attachments are useful when you want to share information that exists in another file format.
Once you attach a file, you can then provide a link to it from a Confluence page.
When a user clicks on the link, the attachment will open, so long as the user has the software application
needed to open the attachment.
In the case of image attachments, Confluence allows you to display attached images on the page.
If you attach a file with the same name as an existing attachment, Confluence will create a new version
of the existing attachment.
RELATED TOPICS
• Displaying an Image
• Configuring Attachment Size
• Attachment Storage Configuration
When you attach a file to a page, Confluence makes a copy of the file and stores it on the server. File
attachments in Confluence are contained in the 'Attachments' tab of a page.
To attach a file, you need the 'Create Attachments' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
This page tells you how to use the 'Attachments' tab to attach a file to a page. You can also attach
files via the 'Insert Link' icon as described in Linking to an Attachment.
Handy Hint
Changes you make to the original file after you've attached it don't affect the copy in Confluence. To
update the content of the file, you will need to upload a new version.
Attaching files
To attach a file to a page,
Attachment Versions
If you upload a file with the same name as an existing attachment, Confluence will rename the old file
and maintain a version of it on the server. Read more about Attachment Versions and Viewing Attachment
Details.
RELATED TOPICS
An attachment is any file that is included with your page. Images, word documents, presentations, PDFs,
multimedia and sound files are some examples of attachments. Attachments are useful when you want to
share information that exists in another file format. Read more in the Attachment Overview.
To create a new version of an existing attachment, simply upload an attachment with the same filename.
The existing file will be kept as 'Version x', and can be accessed from the page's 'Attachments' tab.
The recording of attachment history was improved in Confluence 2.7.1 and later. The screenshots
below show the improved functionality. Read the Confluence 2.7.1 Release Notes.
• You cannot remove specific versions of an attachment — if you remove an attachment, all versions
will disappear. (See feature request CONF-3079.)
• You cannot revert to a previous version of an attachment. (See feature request CONF-1943.
• By default, attachments and their versions are stored in the <confluence_home>/attachments
directory. (See Attachment Storage Configuration in the Administrator's Guide.) There is no limit to
the number of attachments/versions, provided that there is enough disk space.
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
Use Confluence's Attachments macro to display the list of attachments that belong to a page.
Attachments macro
Optional Parameters
{attachments:patterns=.*jpg,.*gif}
Use a comma-separated list of regular expressions to specify the filenames of the attachments you want
displayed.
Note
The patterns are regular expressions, so to match a file suffix of 'jpg', use .*jpg, not *.jpg.
{attachments:old=true}
An optional true/false value determines whether to show old versions of attachments. This is set to false
by default.
RELATED TOPICS
RELATED TOPICS
To edit an attachment's details, you need 'Create Attachments' permission which is assigned by a
space administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
RELATED TOPICS
Moving an Attachment
Viewing Attachment Details
Working with Attachments
You can now embed multimedia files into a Confluence page as as easily as you can an image. Confluence
supports these formats:
• Flash (.swf)
• Quicktime movies (.mov)
• Windows Media (.wma, .wmv)
• Real Media (.rm, .ram)
• MP3 files (.mp3)
• AVI files (.avi) May require an avi decoder to be enabled within a browser
Other types of files can be used, but may require the specification of the "classid", "codebase" and
"pluginspage" properties in order to be recognised by web browsers.
If you get an error 'Unable to embed content of type application/octet-stream', this means the mime-type
is not being correctly recognised. You can add a type parameter to the embedded markup to override the
auto-detected mime-type. See below for an example.
Attach the file to the page. You can then include it as you would include an image, like this:
!filename.mov!
Usage
To play .avi files, you require to specify the dimensions and type.
For instance to play a test.avi file
!test.avi|height=200,width=200,id=media!
NOTE: Due to security reasons, files located on remote servers are not permitted.
Optionally
Define the properties of the embedded object using a comma separated list of properties
!filename.mov|height=800,width=600,id=media!
!filename|type=image/jpeg!
RELATED TOPICS
Below are some ideas on how your wiki page might include information from a Microsoft PowerPoint
presentation.
Some of these guidelines involve the use of plugins which are not supported by Atlassian. Please
weigh up your options carefully before deciding which way to go.
The simplest way to embed a PowerPoint presentation in Confluence is to convert the PowerPoint file to
web page format, and embed the page inside your Confluence document. If you accept page edits or
comments from untrustworthy users, you should not attempt this process, due to a risk of malicious user
attacks via the html-include macro.
1. Review the risks associated with enabling the html-include macro here.
2. If you decide to proceed, follow the instructions to enable embedded HTML pages using the macro.
3. Select an PPT converter. There are at least two applications that can convert PPT to HTML. One is
Producer for PowerPoint. If you don't actually have PowerPoint on your machine, you can use the
Internet Assistant for Powerpoint instead. Download and install your converter.
4. Follow the converser usage documentation to perform the HTML conversion. An Internet Assistant
conversion guide can be found here. The conversion process will create a small collection of HTML
pages. Each slide will have its own page, plus an index page with buttons to let you switch between
slide pages.
5. If you wish, you can test the HTML presentation now by loading the index page in your browser.
6. Place the HTML files into their own directory, named uniquely by the title of your presentation.
7. Find a suitable location to host these files within your web server. Confluence hosts all files
within the <my-install-directory>/confluence/ directory, so a good example location for
Confluence standalone users is to go to <my-install-directory>/confluence/pages/ and create a
subdirectory called powerpoint.
8. Move the HTML directory into the PowerPoint folder, e.g. <my-install-directory>/confluence/
pages/powerpoint/<my-presentation-name> containing index.html, slide01.html... or similar.
9. Edit or create the page where you wish to embed the PowerPoint presentation. In wiki markup,
insert the html-include macro pointing to the index page of your slides. Remember that URLs are
case sensitive. For example
{html-include:url=http://<my-base-url>/pages/powerpoint/<my-presentation-name>/index.html}
10. Save the page. The index page to your slides should now appear.
1. Convert your PowerPoint pages into JPEG or PNG images, using 'save as' from PowerPoint
(slide1.jpg, slide2.jpg...).
2. Upload the image files to your Confluence page in bulk, using the WebDAV plugin.
3. Use the Slideshow plugin to render the images as a slideshow in Confluence.
Optionally, you could create a page template or a user macro that uses the Slideshow plugin, so that
you do not have to code this into the wiki page each time you create a new show.
An attachment is any file that is included with your page. Images, word documents, presentations, PDFs,
multimedia and sound files are some examples of attachments. Attachments are useful when you want to
share information that exists in another file format. Read more in the Attachment Overview.
To find an attachment, you can search the list of attachments in a space or the attachments on a specific
page.
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Attachments' tab.
3. This will display a list of all attachments in the space.
4. Browse through the list to locate the attachment.
5. You can choose to view only files of a particular type:
• Type the last part of the file name in the 'Filter By File Extension' text field. For example, enter
'gif' to see only image files of the GIF format.
• Click 'Go'.
6. You can view the attachment itself or the page to which it is attached by clicking on the
corresponding link.
Handy Hint
If you know the title of an attachment, you might find it faster by doing a Quick Search.
Once you have attached a file to a page, you can easily provide a link to it from the page.
This page tells you how to use Wiki Markup to link to an attachment. You can also use the Rich Text editor
to link to an attachment.
Images are a special form of attachment. Read about displaying images on a page.
Where:
'Linking to attachments.pdf' is the name of the file you want to link to.
Optionally,
RELATED TOPICS
An attachment is any file that is included with your page. Images, word documents, presentations, PDFs,
multimedia and sound files are some examples of attachments. Read more about attachments in the
Attachments Overview.
There are two places where you can view attachment details.
• View the attachments in a space — this will show the files/images attached to all pages in the space.
• View the attachments for a specific page.
The recording of attachment history was improved in Confluence 2.7.1 and later. The screenshots
below show the improved functionality. Read the Confluence 2.7.1 Release Notes.
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Attachments' tab. This will display a list of all the attachments in the space. Each
attachment is displayed along with its details and the page it is attached to.
3. You can choose to view only files of a particular type:
• Type the last part of the file name in the 'Filter By File Extension' text field. For example, enter
'gif' to see only image files of the GIF format.
• Click 'Go'.
1. Go to the page.
2. Click the 'Attachments' tab. This will display a list of all the attachments in the page along with their
details. For each attachment, links are also provided to edit the attachment's details and to delete
the attachment.
Attachment Details:
In the screenshot above, A. D. Ministrator created the first version of harbour.jpg, John Smith uploaded
the second version and Jane Smith added a comment (and is listed as the last modifier).
RELATED TOPICS
Bookmarks will only be available if your Confluence administrator has enabled the Social Bookmarking
plugin.
The Social Bookmarking plugin allows you to share bookmarks with your team. You can create a
bookmark and save it in a Confluence space. To send the bookmark to other Confluence users, simply
label it for their personal spaces or for public spaces. You can also subscribe to a bookmarks RSS feed.
A bookmark is a page which points to a website or other URL. The website or URL can be within or
external to Confluence. The bookmark can also contain comments from the person who created the
bookmark, telling you why the website is interesting.
Ask a colleague to bookmark interesting things for you while you're away
Going away, and don't want to monitor all your RSS feeds or watch the pages while you're on
holiday?
• Ask a friend or a colleague to bookmark the news items and other sites that they think you
should know about.
• When you get back, scan your bookmarks at your leisure. No worries that the important items
will drop off your RSS feeds or clog your mailbox!
The plugin documentation gives an overview of the bookmark functionality. In addition, here are some
detailed instructions:
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a bookmark icon to your browser
• Viewing bookmarks
• Subscribing to a bookmarks feed
• Editing a bookmark
• Commenting on a bookmark
• Removing a bookmark
• Displaying bookmarks on a Confluence page
The .bookmarks page
You may notice that your space has a page called '.bookmarks'. This page is a container for
all the bookmarks in the space. Do not delete or move this page, or you will lose all your
bookmarks.
RELATED TOPICS
Bookmarks Macro
Social Bookmarking Plugin
Working with Spaces Overview
The Social Bookmarking plugin allows you to share bookmarks with your team. You can create a
bookmark and save it in a Confluence space. To send the bookmark to other Confluence users, simply
label it for their personal spaces or for public spaces. You can also subscribe to a bookmarks RSS feed.
A bookmark is a page which points to a website or other URL. The website or URL can be within or
external to Confluence. The bookmark can also contain comments from the person who created the
bookmark, telling you why the website is interesting.
You can save a bookmark in any space where you can create a page.
You can label a bookmark for any space, using the space key as described below.
1.
A bookmark icon on your browser toolbar. This is the quickest way.
2. A space's 'Add Bookmark' action.
3. The 'Add Bookmark' link on the 'Space Bookmarks' screen.
• Choose the space where the bookmark will be saved, and also
• optionally, send the bookmark to a colleague by labelling it for their personal space or label the
bookmark for a global space.
1. If you haven't already done so, add the bookmark icon to your browser toolbar.
2. Go to the website you're interested in.
3. Click the bookmark icon on your browser toolbar.
(Internet Explorer)
(Firefox)
4. If you're not already logged in to Confluence, the Confluence login screen will appear. Log in as
usual.
5. The 'Add Bookmark' screen will appear. Complete the information and save the bookmark, as
described below.
3. The 'Add Bookmark' screen will appear. Complete the information and save the bookmark, as
described below.
To add a bookmark via the 'Add Bookmark' link on the 'Space Bookmarks' screen,
bookmark to a global space, e.g. for_sales. Use 'for_~username' to send the bookmark
to a Confluence user's personal space. e.g. for_~joebloggs.
° To categorise the bookmark in the way we usually use labels.
RELATED TOPICS
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
The Social Bookmarking plugin allows you to share bookmarks with your team. You can create a
bookmark and save it in a Confluence space. To send the bookmark to other Confluence users, simply
label it for their personal spaces or for public spaces. You can also subscribe to a bookmarks RSS feed.
A bookmark is a page which points to a website or other URL. The website or URL can be within or
external to Confluence. The bookmark can also contain comments from the person who created the
bookmark, telling you why the website is interesting.
You can add a bookmark icon on your browser toolbar. This will make adding a bookmark quick and
easy:
• When you want to create a bookmark pointing to a website, you don't have to leave the website.
Just click the icon on your toolbar.
• The website title and URL will be automatically copied from the website to your bookmark.
• When you've finished adding the bookmark, you will be automatically returned to the website.
Internet Explorer:
Firefox:
There are two ways to add the icon to the browser toolbar:
• Drag the 'Bookmark in Confluence' link from the 'Space Bookmarks' page onto the browser toolbar.
This method works for most browsers, including Firefox. Read the full instructions.
• Manually add the 'Bookmark in Confluence' link to your browser's 'Favorites - Links' folder. This
method works for Internet Explorer 7. Read the full instructions.
You can change the bookmark name from 'Bookmark in Confluence' to something else, if you want to.
Just use your browser's own functions for editing/organising bookmarks and bookmark properties.
RELATED TOPICS
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
° Adding a Bookmark Link to your Browser's Favorites
° Dragging a Bookmark Link to your Browser
When using bookmarks in Confluence, you will find it useful to put a bookmark icon on your browser
toolbar. Read an overview of adding the icon to your toolbar.
This page tells you how to add the Confluence bookmark link to your 'Links' folder within your browser's
'Favorites'. This will ensure that the link and its icon appear on the 'Links' toolbar. We are using Internet
Explorer 7 as an example browser
1. First make sure that your browser's 'Links' toolbar is showing: In IE7, click 'Tools' in the browser
menu bar, then select 'Toolbars' and put a check mark next to 'Links'.
2. Go to 'Browse Space' for any Confluence space and click the 'Bookmarks' tab.
3. The 'Space Bookmarks' screen will appear. Right-click the 'Bookmark in Confluence' link on the right
of the screen, and select 'Add to Favorites...'.
4. If the browser gives a security warning and asks if you want to continue, click 'Yes'.
5. The 'Add a Favorite' window appears. Edit the 'Name' to something like 'Bookmark in Confluence'.
6. Select 'Links' from the 'Create in' dropdown list.
7. Click the 'Add' button.
8. The bookmark icon appears in your browser's 'Links' toolbar:
You can change the bookmark name from 'Bookmark in Confluence' to something else, if you want to.
Just use your browser's own functions for editing/organising bookmarks and bookmark properties.
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
When using bookmarks in Confluence, you will find it useful to put a bookmark icon on your browser
toolbar. Read an overview of adding the icon to your toolbar.
This page tells you how to drag the bookmark link from Confluence to the browser toolbar, using Firefox
as an example browser.
You can change the bookmark name from 'Bookmark in Confluence' to something else, if you want to.
Just use your browser's own functions for editing/organising bookmarks and bookmark properties.
RELATED TOPICS
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
Permissions
In order to edit a bookmark, you must have 'create page' permissions for the space in which the
bookmark was saved.
In order to comment on a bookmark, you must have 'create comments' permissions for the space in
which the bookmark was saved.
You can edit or comment on a bookmark by going to either of the following spaces:
RELATED TOPICS
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
In order to remove a bookmark, you must have 'remove page' permissions for the space in which
the bookmark was saved.
When you remove a bookmark, it disappears from all spaces i.e. the space in which it was saved and
any spaces for which it was labelled.
To remove a bookmark,
RELATED TOPICS
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
The Social Bookmarking plugin allows you to share bookmarks with your team. You can create a
bookmark and save it in a Confluence space. To send the bookmark to other Confluence users, simply
label it for their personal spaces or for public spaces. You can also subscribe to a bookmarks RSS feed.
A bookmark is a page which points to a website or other URL. The website or URL can be within or
external to Confluence. The bookmark can also contain comments from the person who created the
bookmark, telling you why the website is interesting.
RSS is a format used by a number of organisations to share news. You can subscribe to an 'RSS
feed' and then use an 'RSS reader' to view the information in the feed. A feed is a URL (web
address) which supplies the news upon request. A reader is a program which displays the news for
you. Your reader may be on a website, an addon to your browser, part of your email program, or a
stand-alone program.
More information:
The bookmarks feed is in RSS2 format. There are two feeds in each space:
• A feed for the bookmarks saved in a particular space. This might be:
° Your personal space, where you store all the bookmarks of interest to you, as well as the
• A feed for the bookmarks labelled for a particular space. This might be:
° Your personal space, where you can see the bookmarks other people have sent to you.
° A global space, where you or other people have sent bookmarks relevant to that space.
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
The Social Bookmarking plugin allows you to share bookmarks with your team. You can create a
bookmark and save it in a Confluence space. To send the bookmark to other Confluence users, simply
label it for their personal spaces or for public spaces. You can also subscribe to a bookmarks RSS feed.
A bookmark is a page which points to a website or other URL. The website or URL can be within or
external to Confluence. The bookmark can also contain comments from the person who created the
bookmark, telling you why the website is interesting.
This page tells you how to view a list of bookmarks in a space. If you want to include a list of macros on
your Confluence page, use the Bookmarks Macro.
• View the bookmarks labelled for a particular space. This might be:
° Your personal space, where you can see the bookmarks other people have sent to you.
° A global space, where you or other people have sent bookmarks relevant to that space.
1. Click the bookmark title. This is the bold, underlined name shown above the bookmark description
on the 'Space Bookmarks' screen.
2. The website or other URL will open in your browser.
• Adding a bookmark
• Adding a Bookmark Icon to your Browser
• Editing or Commenting on a Bookmark
• Removing a Bookmark
• Subscribing to a Bookmarks RSS Feed
• Viewing Bookmarks
Adding a page or a space as a favourite provides you with faster access to the content you are interested
in within the site.
1. Favourite Spaces
Once you add a space as a favourite, it will appear in the 'MY' tab in the spaces section of the dashboard.
The 'Recently updated' section in this view will also display content only from your favourite spaces.
The Dashboard remembers which one of the views, 'My', 'Team', 'All' or 'New' you were most recently
viewing. So if you clicked the 'MY' tab on this visit, next time around, as soon as you log in to Confluence,
only the list of your favourite spaces and the recently modified content within them will be displayed to
you.
2. Favourite Pages
The dashboard will display a list of your most recently added favourite pages, so you can access them
easily as soon as you login to Confluence.
You can view a list of all pages and spaces you added as favourites by going to your 'Profile'. This means
that you no longer have to navigate through complicated site structures to find the pages that you are
interested in but can go to them directly.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding Favourites
Removing Favourites
Dashboard
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing Favourites
located at the top right-hand corner of the page. This will change to
to indicate that you have
removed it from your favourites.
located beside the space in the list of spaces displayed. This will change to to
indicate that you have
removed it from your favourites.
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing Favourites
You can view your favourite spaces by going to the 'MY' tab under the spaces section on the Dashboard.
Confluence will also list your most recently added favourite pages on the Dashboard.
1. Click on the 'Profile' link located at the top right-hand corner of the page.
2. Go to the 'Labels' tab. A list of your personal labels is displayed to the left of the screen under 'Your
Labels'.
3. Click on 'Favourite'. This will display a list of all spaces and pages that you have added as favourites.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding Favourites
Removing Favourites
Labels are user-defined tag words that can be assigned to pages and spaces, to categorise, identify or
bookmark content in Confluence.
For example, you can assign the label 'accounting' to all accounts-related pages on the site. You can then
browse all pages with the label 'accounting' in an individual space or across the site, do a search based
on it, and even use it to filter information when you subscribe to a Confluence RSS feed.
Because labels are user-defined, you can add any word (or even make up your own) that helps you
identify the content in the site.
Labels appear below the page tabs in a page and can be added or removed without affecting the content
of the page.
Global Labels: A global label is available to all users across the site. Once a global label is added, any
user with permission to view a page can also view its labels. Any user with permission to edit a page can
add a global label to a page.
Personal Labels: A personal label is only available to the user that created it. Any user with 'view'
permission can add a personal label to a page.
• Labels are user-defined which means that you decide what information is relevant to you and how
you are going to label it.
• You can group pages without having to restructure the site.
• Labels are easy to add and edit, and do not affect the actual content of the page.
• You can use labels to filter information during a search.
• You can add as many labels as you like to a page.
• The RSS feed builder allows you to create a news feed based on labels.
RELATED TOPICS
Any user with 'edit' permission for a page can add a global label to it.
1. Go to the 'view' mode of the page. If the page already has labels, these will be displayed at the top
of the page below the page title.
2. Click on the 'Edit' link beside the list of labels (highlighted in yellow). This will display a form with an
input field and a list of 'Suggested Labels' to choose from.
3. Check if you want to use any of the suggested labels; these are a list of labels you've used recently
and the most popular labels in the space. Clicking on a label will add it to the page.
If you want to add a new label, simply type it in and click 'Add'. As you type, the drop-down field
will display the label closest to the word you are typing. It is possible another user may have added
the same label or a similar label which you can select and reuse.
4. Click 'Done'.
Note
Labels are always in lowercase. Even if you use uppercase characters, Confluence will convert these
to lowercase when it adds the label.
RELATED TOPICS
You can use personal labels to mark content that you personally are interested in.
Any user with 'view' permission can add a personal label. Personal labels are visible only to the user who
created them. To differentiate them from global labels, personal labels include the prefix 'my:' in the label
name.
You can view your personal labels from your user profile.
• my:sales
• my:stuff
• my:trivia
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link at the top right-hand corner of the page.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click 'Edit Space Details'. This will take you to a new screen.
3. Click 'Edit Space Labels' in the left navigation frame. In the input field displayed under the heading
'Labels', type in your label and click 'Add'. A list of suggested labels is also displayed in the form.
Click on the label to add it.
RELATED TOPICS
For example, if you have one or more spaces on the site that the Sales team may be interested in, you
can group all these spaces together under the label 'sales'.
On the Dashboard, you can then choose 'Sales' from the drop down menu under the 'Team' tab in the
spaces list, and have only the list of spaces relevant to the Sales team displayed. The 'Recently Updated'
section will also display content only from these spaces.
You will need to add the same label all the spaces you want to group together.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link at the top right-hand corner of the page.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click 'Edit Space Details'. This will take you to a new screen.
3. Click 'Edit Space Labels' in the left navigation frame.
4. In the input field displayed under 'Team Labels', type in your label and click 'Add'. A list of
'Suggested Labels' is also displayed in the form. Click on the label to add it.
Labels allow users to sub-categorise pages and reference content across multiple categories.
• Vehicles Space
° Cars (vehicle-type)
- Toyota Prius (car, vehicle)
- Honda Civic (car, vehicle)
- Porshe Carrera (car, vehicle)
° Motorbikes (vehicle-type)
- Harley Davidson Sportster (motorbike, vehicle)
- Suzuki GSX-R (motorbike, vehicle)
This page hierarchy can then be cross-categorised using labels, with pages referenced using the Content
by Label Macro.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Navmap Macro
Renders the list of pages associated with a specified label as a navigation map.
Lists labels most recently used in a specified scope (Global, Space, or Personal)
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
Contentbylabel Macro
By default, Confluence lists all the labels for each result displayed. See optional parameters below to
disable this.
{contentbylabel:needs-fixing|showLabels=false|maxResults=99|showSpace=false}
Optional Parameters
1. Filter by space
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|key=PETS}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|key=@self}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|key=@all}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|type=page,blogpost}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|showLabels=false}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|showSpace=false}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|excerpt=true}
{contentbylabel:dogs,cats|maxResults=99}
{children|sort=creation|reverse=true}
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Navmap macro displays the list of pages associated with a specified label as a navigation map.
Navmap macro
Optional Parameters:
{navmap:mylabel|wrapAfter=3}
{navmap:mylabel|cellWidth=120}
{navmap:mylabel|cellHeight=120}
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Recently-used-label macro renders a list of the most recently used labels in a specified scope (Global/
Space/Personal)
Recently-used-labels macro
Optional Parameters
{recently-used-labels:count=5}
{recently-used-labels:scope=space}
{recently-used-labels:style=table}
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Related-labels macro lists the labels commonly associated with the current page's labels.
Related-labels macro
Optional Parameters
Specify the labels for which you want to view related labels
RELATED TOPICS
Navmap Macro
Content by Label Macro
Recently Used Labels Macro
Working with Labels Overview
Working with Macros
These instructions explain how to navigate Confluence pages by label. To start, you should open the 'View
Labels' page.
After clicking a label on a Confluence page, you're shown the 'Browse Space > Labels' page. Here, click
'See content from all spaces' to open the 'View Labels' page.
If you click another label, a new page loads, showing pages that contain both of the labels. You can
continue to add labels to the results in this way.
Once two labels are in use, links to subtract one label from the search appear at the end of the labels list.
These are easily identified because these links have a preceding minus sign, like so:
- fedex
http://CONFLUENCE_HOSTNAME/label/foo+bar
3. Press Enter.
4. The 'View Labels' page will load, showing search results on pages with the labels 'foo' and 'bar'.
RELATED TOPICS
Labels are user-defined tag words that can be assigned to pages and spaces, to categorise, identify or
bookmark content in Confluence.
You can see the existing labels, and the pages which contain the labels, by Viewing Global Labels.
1. Go to the page that contains the label. All labels are displayed at the top of the page below the page
title.
2. Click 'Edit' beside the list of labels (highlighted in yellow). Each of the labels will display a
mark beside it.
3.
Click to remove the
label, then click 'Done'
RELATED TOPICS
Labels are user-defined tag words that can be assigned to pages and spaces, to categorise, identify or
bookmark content in Confluence.
This page tells you how to remove a space label. If you want to remove a label from a page, read the
instructions here.
RELATED TOPICS
Labels are user-defined tag words that can be assigned to pages and spaces, to categorise, identify or
bookmark content in Confluence.
This page tells you how to remove a team label. If you want to remove a label from a page, read the
instructions here.
RELATED TOPICS
Any page that has labels will have them listed together in a block, with the heading 'Labels'.
Global labels are visible to all users with 'view' permission and personal labels are only visible to the user
that created them.
1. If you are in a page that has labels, clicking on a label will take you to the 'Label' tab of the 'Browse
Space' view where all pages in the space with that label will be listed.
Click on the link 'See content from all spaces' to view all pages with the same label across the site.
2. Click on the 'Labels' tab in the 'Browse Space' view of the space. You have the option to view labels
in one of two ways:
• Click 'All labels' to view all labels in the space. From this view, you can click on a link to view
an alphabetical listing of all labels across the site. Clicking on a label will list all content in the
space with that label. It will also display any related labels if they exist. Related labels are
labels that frequently appear on pages together. For Example, if pages labelled with 'sales' also
tend to have the label 'marketing', these will be displayed as related labels.
• Click popular labels to view a list of the most frequently used labels in that space. From here,
you can also view the most popular global labels across the site.
Confluence defaults to one of these views when you go to the 'Labels' tab based on your
preference on your last visit to the site.
Each of these views also displays a list of up to fifteen most 'Recent Labels' and 'Popular
Labels' in the space.
Screenshot: Labels as they are displayed on a page
RELATED TOPICS
The easiest way to find labelled content is to do a quick search for it. If there is a label matching your
query, it will be listed above the search results. Clicking on the link will display all content in the site with
that label. (Clicking additional labels on the following page will conduct another search, adding that label
to your existing search. See also Navigating Pages by Label.)
• You can view all labelled content for a space by going to the 'Label' tab in the 'Browse Space' view of
a space.
• You can view content labelled with personal labels by going to your 'Profile' and clicking on the
'Label' tab.
In the search box, you can use the labelText: prefix to search specifically for page labels.
In the URL bar of your web browser, you can type URLs like the following to search for multiple labels in
pages:
http://CONFLUENCE_HOSTNAME/label/foo+bar
On pressing enter, the 'View Labels' page will load, showing search results on pages with the labels foo
and bar.
RELATED TOPICS
Any page that has labels (global or personal) will have them listed at the top of the page below the page
title. Personal labels are only visible to the user that created them.
RELATED LABELS
Popular labels are labels that are frequently used. Confluence allows you to view the most popular labels
both within a space and across the site.
In both these views, you have the option to sort the listing of labels to display them 'alphabetically' or in
order of their 'popularity'.
The bigger the font size, the more popular the label.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence tries to encourage linking by making it simple as possible. You can link to content anywhere
within Confluence or an external site just as easily, using the same syntax. Confluence also gives you the
flexibility to do some pretty complicated things with links.
You can create links to and from any of the editable content on the site:
• News items
• Comments
• User profiles or personal spaces
• Mail messages
• Attachments
Links in Confluence are always denoted by square brackets. Whenever you place text between square
brackets, Confluence recognises it as a link.
Handy Hint
• Links in Confluence will not break even when you rename pages or move them between spaces
on your site!
• Looking for link type not shown above? You might find a plugin can help you.
RELATED TOPICS
CamelCase is a form of markup used in many wikis where words capitalized and compounded together
without spaces LikeThis, are used to create links.
By default, CamelCasing is not enabled in Confluence. However, a site administrator can turn on
CamelCasing from the Administration Console.
where:
To link to a page you intend to create later (undefined page) using CamelCase linking
Confluence allows you to create links first and add add content to pages later. This type of a link is an
undefined link and is indicated with the plus sign. Clicking on the link will bring up a screen where you
can add content for the page.
where:
Sometimes you may wish to use a CamelCase word in a page, but do not want it to be drawn as a link.
You can accomplish this using the {nolink} macro:
{nolink} and {nl} do the same thing, just use whichever you find more convenient.
The {nolink} and {nl} macros are only available in Confluence 2.1.3 or later. In versions of Confluence
prior to 2.1.3, there is no way to prevent a CamelCase word from becoming a link short of disabling
CamelCase linking across the entire Confluence site.
RELATED TOPICS
This page is a demonstration of a page that can be linked to using CamelCase linking. You can find more
information on the subject here.
Sometimes, you may need to change the default labels for links if they are not particularly informative or
attractive, and especially if you are including the links in the middle of your own text.
Where:
Where:
'an article on the subject' is how you want to refer to the news item
'/2005/08/26/' is the date the news item was published.
'Sample News'' is the actual title of the news item
Where:
RELATED TOPICS
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam fermentum vestibulum est. Cras
rhoncus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Sed quis tortor. Donec non ipsum. Mauris condimentum, odio nec porta tristique, ante neque malesuada
massa, in dignissim eros velit at tellus. Donec et risus in ligula eleifend consectetuer. Donec volutpat
eleifend augue. Integer gravida sodales leo. Nunc vehicula neque ac erat. Vivamus non nisl. Fusce ac
magna. Suspendisse euismod libero eget mauris.
This page tells you how to link an image to another page or URL. When the user clicks the image, they
will jump to the linked page. You can also read the full instructions on attaching a file to a page and
displaying an image on a page.
To link an image to another page, you will embed the image markup inside the linking markup.
The colon in the example is used to specify the space key ('DOC'). The page name then defaults to the
home page for the space.
RELATED TOPICS
• ImageMap Plugin
• Other image and visualisation plugins
Sometimes you may want to link to a Confluence page from outside Confluence, e.g. from within another
website or from within an email. In this case, you may want to link to a 'permanent' URL (also called a
'permalink'), in case the name of the Confluence page changes.
(Note: if you are linking to a page from within another Confluence page, see Linking to Pages Within
the Same Space or Linking to Pages in Another Space — links created in this way will be automatically
updated if the page is renamed.)
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to use Confluence Notation to link to a Confluence page. Instead, you can also
use the Rich Text editor.
In Confluence notation, links are always denoted by square brackets. Whenever you place text between
square brackets, Confluence recognizes it as a link.
You can display your own text instead of the page name: Inside the square brackets, insert the
required text followed by a vertical bar and then the page name. The second example shows this.
where:
'DS' is the space key of the space you are linking to, in this instance, the Demonstration Space.
'Confluence Overview' is the name of the page in the space, 'DS'.
where:
'DS' is the space key of the space you are linking to, in this instance, the Demonstration Space.
The space key is the short name displayed in parentheses beside each space name on the dashboard,
and in various other places across the site.
Handy Hint
You can also create a link to any Confluence page by clicking 'Insert Link' when you are in the
'Edit' mode of a page. A pop-screen allows you to select pages from anywhere within Confluence.
Selecting a page creates a link to that page.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to use Wiki Markup to link to a Confluence page from within another Confluence
page. Instead of Wiki Markup, you can use the Rich Text editor.
You can display your own text instead of the page name: Inside the square brackets, insert the
required text followed by a vertical bar and then the page name. The second example below shows this.
In the above examples, 'Confluence User Guide' is the name of the page you want to link to.
1. Add a link, specifying the name of a page which does not exist. See example below.
2. Save the page which contains the undefined link. Confluence indicates undefined links by colouring
them red.
3. When you (or another user) click on the link, the 'Add Page' screen appears.
4. You can then follow the steps outlined above to enter the page name, add content and save the
page.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to use Confluence Notation to link to a web page. Instead, you can also use the
Rich Text editor.
In Confluence notation, links are always denoted by square brackets. Whenever you place text between
square brackets, Confluence recognizes it as a link.
You can display your own text instead of the URL: Inside the square brackets, insert the required text
followed by a vertical bar and then the URL. The second example shows this.
Where:
Confluence will also try to find URLs within the text of the page and convert them into links, but it may
have trouble separating the link from its surrounding text, especially when punctuation is involved.
Putting the link inside square brackets will ensure that it is interpreted the right way.
RELATED TOPICS
Trackback is a mechanism by which two sites can stay informed each time one site refers to the other by
means of trackback 'pings'.
In Confluence, Trackback is enabled by a site administrator from the Administration Console. When
Trackback is enabled, any time you link to an external webpage that supports Trackback Autodiscovery,
Confluence will send a Trackback ping to that page to inform it that it has been linked to.
Confluence pages also support Trackback Autodiscovery, and when Trackback is enabled can receive
trackback pings sent by other sites.
1. Go to the page.
2. View the Page Information under the Info tab
3. Any Trackback pings the page has received will be listed under the page's Incoming Links
RELATED TOPICS
You can insert the HTML 'mailto' tag inside a Confluence link using 'Wiki Markup' as shown below.
You can display your own text instead of the 'mailto' tag: Inside the square brackets, insert the
required text followed by a vertical bar and then the 'mailto' tag. The second example shows this.
Examples
RELATED TOPICS
Anchors allow you to link to specific places within a page. Anchor links can be especially useful when
navigating between sections of a long page or when you want to link to a segment of a page and not to
the page as a whole.
• The link
• The content to which you are linking.
In Confluence, you can place an anchor in a page using the anchor macro. This creates an anchor called
"here", but you can substitute this with whatever name you like.
Anchor Macro
{anchor:here}
Once an anchor is in the page, you can link to it by putting #here (or whatever anchor name you choose)
at the end of a link pointing to that page.
For example, there are two anchors in this page called "top" and "bottom", which you can link to like so:
[#top]
[#bottom]
[#anchorname]
[nameofpage#anchorname]
[spacekey:nameofpage#anchorname]
Linking to headings
Confluence treats all headings as anchors. So you don't have to place an anchor but simply link to it like
this:
[#textofheading]
Warning
Page titles and links to other spaces can be combined with anchors and attachments, but you can't
use attachments and anchors in the same link.
RELATED TOPICS
If you are using Confluence Hosted, the plugins and macros are installed for you by Atlassian. Refer to
the list in the Confluence Hosted FAQ. Read more about the feature limitations in Confluence Hosted.
Macros perform programmatic functions within a page and can be used to generate complex content
structures or dynamic content.
Macros allow you to create markup or include dynamic content in a page that may not be possible using
Confluence notation. For example, the Attachments macro will list a page's attachments in the page itself,
so that readers do not have to visit the Attachments tab.
{attachments}
These optional parameters are included within the curly braces, following a colon, like this:
{attachments:patterns=.*jpg}
When specifying more than one parameter within the same macro, the pipe symbol ('|') is used to
separate one from the other, like this:
{attachments:old=true|patterns=.*jpg}
Confluence Macros
Many macros are shipped with Confluence. The macros currently available in Confluence are listed below.
For each macro, all the optional parameters are also listed with examples of their usage.
Customers using Adaptavist macros or plugins might be interested in the Adaptavist's Confluence user
guide.
• {toc} macro, provided by the Table of Contents Plugin - full documentation by CustomWare.
• {float} macro and others, provided by the Composition plugin - full documentation by CustomWare.
RELATED TOPICS
The Blog Posts Macro allows you to display news items within a page. Clicking on a title takes you to the
news item.
Further Reading
Further Reading
Upgrade Procedure
Further Reading
Further Reading
Further Reading
Further Reading
More Information
More Information
More Information
Further Reading
Further Reading
{blog-posts:1}
Excerpts
{blog-posts:content=excerpts}
Titles
{blog-posts:content=titles}
3. Choose from how far back in time you want items displayed
For example, "time=12h" would display those items created in the last twelve hours, and "time=7d"
would show items made in the last week. (The default is no limit)
Hours
{blog-posts:time=12h}
Days
{blog-posts:time=7d}
The following code will display items that contain either of the labels, 'atlassian' or 'confluence'
The following code will display content with both labels 'atlassian' and 'confluence'
{blog-posts:labels=atlassian,confluence|match-labels=all}
• The following code will display items from the 'Marketing' space (whose key is 'MKTG') and Joe
Smith's personal space:
{blog-posts:spaces=MKTG,~jsmith}
The following code will display the latest 10 items in the 'Marketing' space with the label 'logo'. The items
will be displayed as a list.
{blog-posts:10|labels=logo|spaces=MKT|content=title}
RELATED TOPICS
This page describes the {bookmarks} macro, provided by the Social Bookmarking plugin. Please refer to
Working with Bookmarks for details of how to add, view and subscribe to bookmarks.
Use the {bookmarks} macro to include a list of bookmarks on a Confluence page. By default, the macro
will display the bookmarks saved in the current space.
Bookmarks macro
Optional Parameters
{bookmarks:max=5}
{bookmarks:spaces=~jbloggs,sales}
Specify the space(s) where the bookmarks are saved and the person who created the bookmarks:
The following markup will show the bookmarks created by user 'jbloggs' in his personal space and in the
'sales' space.
{bookmarks:spaces=~jbloggs,sales|creators=jbloggs}
{bookmarks:showAuthor=false|showDate=false
|showDescription=false|showEditLinks=false
|showLabels=false|showListHeader=false
|showSpace=false|showViewLink=false}
RELATED TOPICS
Use the Children Display Macro to display the children and the descendants of a page.
Note that only pages to which you have 'View' permission will be displayed.
Optional Parameters
{children:all=true}
{children:page=space-key:page-name}
{children:depth=2}
{children:first=x}
{children:depth=1|style=h3}
{children:depth=2|excerpt=true}
{children:sort=creation|reverse=true}
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Code Block Macro allows you to display source code in your document with the appropriate syntax
highlighting.
All the optional parameters of the {panel} macro are valid for {code} too.
You can specify the programming language. The default language is Java but you can specify JavaScript,
ActionScript, XML, HTML or SQL instead.
Example 1: Java
Example 2: XML
RELATED TOPICS
You can use the {color} macro to change the colour of a block of text. Specify the colours by name or by
hex value. See more information about web colours.
Usage:
{color:mycolour} ... text ... {color}
Examples:
The Column Macro allows you to define columns within a page. Note that the Column Macro can only be
used within the Section Macro.
Column Macro
Optional Parameter
RELATED TOPICS
The Create Space Button Macro renders a create space icon that links to the 'create space' page.
To display this icon, you require 'Create Space' permission which is assigned by a site administrator from
the Administration Console. See Security or contact a site administrator for more information.
Optional Parameter
RELATED TOPICS
The Excerpt Include Macro is used to display one page's excerpt in another.
To use this macro, the excerpt must have been defined using the Excerpt Macro and both pages must
exist in the same space.
Excerpt Macro
Optionally,
By default, the excerpt is displayed within a panel. A value of "nopanel=true" displays the excerpt without
the panel.
{excerpt-include:Home|nopanel=true}
RELATED TOPICS
Excerpt Macro
Working with Macros
The excerpt macro is used to mark a part of a page's content as its summary. By itself, the excerpt
macro does not change the display of a page. However, defining an excerpt enables other macros such as
excerpt-include and blog-posts macros to display a summary of a page's content.
Excerpt Macro
Optionally,
If you are using Confluence 2.5.x or 2.6.0, you may notice some problems with the {excerpt}
and {excerpt-include} macros, where the macro strips away the markup so that images and links
do not display properly. These problems have been fixed with Confluence 2.6.1. See JIRA issues
CONF-8983 and CONF-8701, and refer to the Confluence 2.6.1 Release Notes for more details.
RELATED TOPICS
Use the Favourite Pages Macro to display a list of your favourite pages.
Optional Parameters
{favpages:maxResults=5}
RELATED TOPIC
Description
The Flowchart Macro creates diagrams composed of shapes joined by lines using the GraphViz language.
Installation
This macro requires that the GraphViz plugin is installed.
Usage
GraphViz Resources
Examples
{flowchart}
main -> parse -> execute
main -> init
main -> cleanup
execute -> make_string
execute -> printf
init -> make_string
main -> printf
execute -> compare
{flowchart}
RELATED TOPICS
The gallery macro creates a gallery of thumbnails from all the images that are attached to a page and
displays them in a tabular format. When a user clicks a thumbnail, the full-size image opens in a new
window. The user can also view the images as a slideshow by clicking the 'view as slideshow' link located
below the title.
• The images shown in the gallery are taken from the files attached to the Confluence page.
• The comments below the images are drawn from the comments on the attachments.
• The gallery will include all the images attached to the page.
• Only the following file formats are supported: gif, png, jpeg. The bmp format is not supported.
• You can sort your images into a particular order - see details below.
• You can specify a title for the gallery and also configure how many columns you want for the
table in which your images are displayed. The default number of columns in the table is 4.
Here's
an
office
photo
Optional parameters
By default, Confluence displays the link to view the images as a slideshow. To disable this link, include the
following code within the macro:
For a dynamic slideshow, you might like to try the Slideshow Plugin.
To use Ajax Style display of the images there is a Gallery Plugin that works on top of the Gallery
Macro.
RELATED TOPICS
Displaying an Image
Thumbnail Macro
Attaching Files to a Page
Editing Attachment Details
Working with Macros
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Global Reports macro renders a list of links to global reports.
These include:
Optional Parameters
Specify the width of the table in which the links are displayed
{global-reports : width=50%}
RELATED TOPICS
The HTML macro allows you to use HTML code within a Confluence page.
Note that the HTML macro will only be available if it has been enabled by your Confluence
administrator.
Usage:
Example:
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The IM macros indicate graphically when a contact is signed into one of the following Instant Messenging
services:
• Yahoo
• AIM
• ICQ.
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Include Page Macro allows you to display the contents of one Confluence page in another.
To display a page's contents, you require 'View' permission for that page. This is assigned by a space
administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
To display part of a page rather than include the whole page, use the Excerpt Macro and the Excerpt
Include Macro.
If the name of the included page is changed after you have written the macro, the page name does
not change automatically in the macro. You will need to change the page name manually in the
macro.
Where:
'Sample Include Page' is the title of the page whose contents you want to display.
Optional Parameter
{include:ds:Confluence Overview}
Where:
RELATED TOPICS
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam fermentum vestibulum est. Cras
rhoncus. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Sed quis tortor. Donec non ipsum. Mauris condimentum, odio nec porta tristique, ante neque malesuada
massa, in dignissim eros velit at tellus. Donec et risus in ligula eleifend consectetuer. Donec volutpat
eleifend augue. Integer gravida sodales leo. Nunc vehicula neque ac erat. Vivamus non nisl. Fusce ac
magna. Suspendisse euismod libero eget mauris.
The Info Macro allows you to highlight helpful information for the visitor.
Info Macro
Optional Parameters
RELATED TOPICS
JIRA is the issue tracking and project management system supplied by Atlassian. The Jira Issues macro
allows you to display a list of issues matching any JIRA filter within a page in Confluence.
Usage: {jiraissues:url=jira_rss_url}
Description: Display a list of JIRA issues on a Confluence page.
Input: See parameters table below.
Output: Nice looking list of issues on a Confluence page.
Bundled with Confluence?
On this page:
{jiraissues:url=CONTENT}
4. Replace 'CONTENT' with the JIRA search URL from your clipboard.
5. Customise the macro output by adding optional parameters (see below) as required.
6. Save the Confluence page.
Example
Below is an example of some macro markup code, requesting a list of issues from the Atlassian public
JIRA site:
Below are the results of the above macro markup, displayed on this Confluence page:
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, you don't need to add any extra parameters. Confluence and JIRA
will work out the security between them, ensuring that the user will see only the issues they are
authorised to see. Read this section if you want more detail.
This section explains how to handle JIRA issues that have restricted viewing. Maybe your JIRA instance
is not visible to anonymous visitors - everyone has to log in before they can see JIRA issues. Or maybe
some of the JIRA issues are restricted to viewing by certain users only.
For Confluence 2.6.x and earlier, if your JIRA issues have restricted viewing (i.e. JIRA requires a login
before allowing access to the issues), then you need to type a JIRA username and password into the
macro markup code and save it onto the Confluence page.
&os_username=MYNAME&os_password=MYPASSWORD
where MYNAME is a JIRA username and MYPASSWORD is the corresponding password for that username.
This username and password should not include an & symbol.
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, your administrator can set up trusted communication between Confluence
and JIRA. The entire process is described in the Confluence Administrator's Guide.
Remove the username and password from your macro markup code
Prior to Confluence 2.7, you needed to include a username and password in the macro markup code
if you wanted to display JIRA issues which had restricted viewing. Once your administrator has set
up trusted communication between Confluence and JIRA, you no longer need to include a username
and password in the markup code for your JIRA macros.
The following options are available for determining the issues which will be retrieved from JIRA and
displayed on the Confluence page:
What you want to do Macro parameter URL parameter Comments
Display the JIRA issues Do not specify
which the logged-in user any authentication
is authorised to see. And parameters. In this
if the user is not logged case, the behaviour
in, display only issues depends on the way
which allow unrestricted your administrator
viewing. has set up trusted
communication between
JIRA and Confluence.
Here is a summary of the
behaviour:
• If trusted
communication
is enabled, the
authorisation will
work seamlessly.
When a logged-
in user views your
page, they will see
only the JIRA issues
they are allowed
to see. And if they
are not logged in,
they will see only the
issues which allow
unrestricted viewing.
• If trusted
communication
is disabled, the
Confluence page will
show only the JIRA
issues which allow
unrestricted viewing.
Ensure that Confluence anonymous Regardless of who the
will display only the user is (logged in or not),
JIRA issues which allow the Confluence page will
unrestricted viewing. show only anonymously-
visible issues. Confluence
will not attempt to set up
a trusted communication
link with JIRA in this case.
Use a pre-determined Not recommended. Prior
&os_username=MYNAME&os_password=MYPASSWORD
username and password to Confluence 2.7, this
to access the JIRA issues. was the only way of
displaying issues with
restricted viewing. For
Confluence 2.7 and later,
this method will still
work. Confluence will
Troubleshooting
HTTPS
The JIRA Issues macro can access a JIRA instance running under SSL as long as the Confluence server is
set to accept the JIRA SSL certificate.
As a result of RSS feed improvements, the (outdated) JIRA Issues Macro differs between JIRA 3.6 and
3.7.
This is not a concern for users running the latest versions of Confluence and JIRA. However, users using
Confluence versions older than 2.2.10 to access JIRA 3.7 must upgrade Confluence or patch the JIRA
Issues macro to handle the 3.7 format.
RELATED TOPICS
To do this, you will need to include the URL of the portlet in the macro.
{jiraportlet:url=urlOfJIRAPortlet}
On this page:
Parameters
Example
Below is an example of some macro markup code, requesting a portlet from the Atlassian public JIRA
site:
{jiraportlet:anonymous=true|url=http://jira.atlassian.com/secure/RunPortlet.jspa?
portletKey=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.portlets:projectstats&description=Stats:%20Confluence
%20(Versions)&projectid=10470&statistictype=fixfor&template=/portlets/dashboard/projectstats.jsp}
Below are the results of the above macro markup, displayed on this Confluence page:
12
2.8
14
2.8.1
12
2.9
Unscheduled 3610
99%
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, you don't need to add any extra parameters. Confluence and JIRA
will work out the security between them, ensuring that the user will see only the issues they are
authorised to see. Read this section if you want more detail.
This section explains how to handle JIRA issues that have restricted viewing. Maybe your JIRA instance
is not visible to anonymous visitors - everyone has to log in before they can see JIRA issues. Or maybe
some of the JIRA issues are restricted to viewing by certain users only.
For Confluence 2.6.x and earlier, if your JIRA issues have restricted viewing (i.e. JIRA requires a login
before allowing access to the issues), then you need to type a JIRA username and password into the
macro markup code and save it onto the Confluence page.
where MYNAME is a JIRA username and MYPASSWORD is the corresponding password for that username.
This username and password should not include an & symbol.
For Confluence 2.7.0 and later, your administrator can set up trusted communication between Confluence
and JIRA. The entire process is described in the Confluence Administrator's Guide.
Remove the username and password from your macro markup code
Prior to Confluence 2.7, you needed to include a username and password in the macro markup code
if you wanted to display JIRA issues which had restricted viewing. Once your administrator has set
up trusted communication between Confluence and JIRA, you no longer need to include a username
and password in the markup code for your JIRA macros.
The following options are available for determining the issues which will be retrieved from JIRA and
displayed on the Confluence page:
What you want to do Macro parameter URL parameter Comments
Display the JIRA issues Do not specify
which the logged-in user any authentication
is authorised to see. And parameters. In this
if the user is not logged case, the behaviour
in, display only issues depends on the way
which allow unrestricted your administrator
viewing. has set up trusted
communication between
JIRA and Confluence.
Here is a summary of the
behaviour:
• If trusted
communication
is enabled, the
authorisation will
work seamlessly.
When a logged-
in user views your
page, they will see
only the JIRA issues
they are allowed
to see. And if they
are not logged in,
they will see only the
issues which allow
unrestricted viewing.
• If trusted
communication
is disabled, the
Confluence page will
show only the JIRA
issues which allow
unrestricted viewing.
Ensure that Confluence anonymous Regardless of who the
will display only the user is (logged in or not),
RELATED TOPICS
The JUnit Report Macro displays a summary of JUnit test results from a directory accessible from the
Confluence server.
{junitreport:directory=file:///*directory*/}
or
{junitreport:url=http://*host*/*path*}
where:
RELATED TOPICS
The Noformat Macro displays a block of text in monospace font with no other formatting.
Noformat Macro
Optional parameters
All the optional parameters of the Panel macro are valid for the Noformat macro too.
RELATED TOPICS
Note Macro
Optional Parameters
Examples
Don't Panic
{note:title=Don't Panic|icon=false}
Be happy. Be happy.
{note}
RELATED TOPICS
The Panel Macro allows you to display a block of text within a fully customisable panel.
Panel Macro
{panel:title=My Title|borderStyle=dashed|
borderColor=#ccc|titleBGColor=#F7D6C1|
bgColor=#FFFFCE} My Title
A formatted panel
{panel}
A formatted panel
Handy Hint:
You can use panels within columns.
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Recently Updated Content macro displays a list of the most recently changed content within
Confluence.
Optional Parameters
1. Specify all the pages from all the spaces that have been recently updated
2. Specify the spaces for which you want to view recently updated content
{recently-updated: width=50% }
The list is rendered in a table whose width can be specified using the width argument (width=50% in the
above example) or else Confluence defaults the width to 99%.
RELATED TOPICS
RSS feed macro embeds an RSS feed on a page. It can display the contents of external feeds, or internal
feeds generated by Confluence. To display blog posts or list recently updated pages in a space, use the
Feed Builder to create an internal feed, then render it using this macro.
• Usage
• Optional Parameters
• Working Example
• Enabling Feed Caching
• Accessing Internal HTTPS Feeds
Usage
Use the Wiki Markup Editor to edit the page and insert the RSS macro with your feed link.
Replace the 'http://www.example.com/rss/' URL with your own feed link in this example:
{rss:url=http://www.example.com/rss/}
By default, the RSS Feed macro caches the feed results for 60 minutes before fetching the data again.
If you wish to change the default caching, use the {cache} macro described below.
Optional Parameters
{rss:url=http://host.com/rss.xml|max=5}
{rss:url=http://host.com/rss.xml|showTitlesOnly=true}
{rss:url=http://host.com/rss.xml|titleBar=false}
Working Example
{rss:url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/syndicate/breakingrss.xml|max=5|showTitlesOnly=true}
{cache:refresh=30m}
{rss:url=http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/stocks|max=5}
{cache}
The Cache plugin page provides more information on customising the cache behaviour.
Related Topics
Subscribing to RSS Feeds within Confluence
The Search Macro does an inline site search and displays the results in the page.
Search Macro
Optional Parameters
Optional Parameters
{search:query=my_query|maxLimit=x}
{search:query=my_query|spacekey=Doctemp}
3. Specify the content type (page, comment, blogpost, attachment, userinfo, spacedesc)
{search:query=my_query|type=comment}
For example, 3d = modified in the last 3 days, 1m3d = modified in the last month and three days)
{search:query=my_query|lastModified= 2d}
Note
Search results will not include those from pages to which you do not have 'View' permission.
RELATED TOPICS
Searching Confluence
Working with Macros
The Section Macro can contain the Column Macro, which allows you to define columns within a page.
Section Macro
Optional Parameter
RELATED TOPICS
You need edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Space Details macro renders the space's details in a table within the page.
Optional Parameter
Specify the width of the table in which the space details are displayed
{space-details: width=50%}
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Spacegraph Macro displays a chart of all the pages in a space and the connections between them.
Spacegraph Macro
{spacegraph}
Optional Parameter
{spacegraph:doctemp}
RELATED TOPICS
The Spaces List Macro is used to display a list of spaces from within a page.
By default, Confluence lists the spaces from your current view of spaces on the Dashboard.
For each space listed, there is a link to browse the space, and to add a new page (if the user has
permission to create pages).
2008 Atlassian
User Groups
ABC
Alabama Street
Construction
Artwork
This is the
repository
for any files
for artwork
(stationery,
signs, etc)
Atlassian
Developer
Network
For the
community
of developers
modifying and
extending JIRA &
Confluence.
Atlassian
Development
Atlassian
Developers.
Because they're
just too good to
be kept hidden
in an office in
Sydney.
Atlassian Gear
Atlassian IDE
Plugin
Atlassian Japan
This space is for
collaborating
with Imahima
Atlassian's
exclusive
Japanese
distributor.
Atlassian Jobs
Atlassian
KnowledgeBase
Atlassian Media
Room
Optional Parameters
Specify the width of the table in which the spaces are listed
{spaces-list:width=40%}
{spaces-list:team}
Replace 'team' with 'all', 'my' or 'new' to display all spaces, my spaces only or news spaces only.
RELATED TOPICS
Browsing a space
Creating a New Page
Working with Macros
The Tasklist macro allows you to create and update a list of tasks on the wiki page. Users viewing the
page can modify the tasks without putting the page into 'Edit' mode, provided they have the required
permissions to modify the page.
The tasklist macro is supplied by the Dynamic Tasklist 2 plugin, which is bundled with Confluence
version 2.8 and later. The new tasklist macro replaces the older tasklist and dynamictasklist
macros.
On this page:
Here is an example:
• Adding a task: Type the task description in the text box under the list name, and click the 'Add'
button.
• Completing/uncompleting a task: Click the checkbox next to a task to mark the task as complete.
The task name will become a lighter color and the progress bar will be updated. Click the checkbox
Once the task details are visible, you have more options:
• Changing the priority: Click the appropriate radio button — 'High', 'Medium' or 'Low'.
• Assigning the task: Change the assignee of the task by typing in or searching for a username.
Screenshot: Task List showing Task Details
• Click the 'Sort by' dropdown list and select one of the options:
° Custom: This is the default option.
° Priority: Sort the list in order of the priority you have allocated to each task.
° Date Created: Sort the list in order of the dates upon which the tasks were created.
° Completed: Move all completed tasks to the bottom or top of the list.
° Name: Sort the list in order of the task names.
° Assignee: Sort the list in order of the usernames assigned to the tasks.
• When you have selected a sort order, a new ascending/descending sequence icon appears to the
right of the 'Sort by' box. Click the ascending/descending sequence icon to reverse the sort order.
• Click the 'drag me' handle to the right of the task name.
• Holding down the mouse button, drag the task up or down the list. Make sure the task is positioned
to the left of the existing tasks. A space will open and you will be able to drop the task into its new
position.
{tasklist:Planning a Holiday}
||Completed||Priority||Locked||CreatedDate||CompletedDate||Assignee||Name||
|F|M|F|1206677926204| |smaddox|Book tickets|
|F|H|F|1206677938246| |smaddox|Check passport expiry|
|F|M|F|1206677946737| |smaddox|Apply for visa|
|F|M|F|1206677954490| |smaddox|Buy suitcases|
{tasklist}
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
Use the Thumbnail macro when you want to display a thumbnail of an image attached to any Confluence
page. When a user clicks the thumbnail image, a new window will pop up showing the full-size image.
The macro resizes the original image proportionately, allowing for a maximum height or width of 200
pixels by default.
A Confluence Administrator can change the size of thumbnails via the Administration Console. This
will also affect the images displayed by the Gallery macro.
Image formats
Confluence will only create thumbnails for these file formats: gif, jpg, and png. The bmp format is
not supported.
Image attributes
The HTML attributes as described in Displaying an Image override the thumbnail macro settings.
Attaching a new image file - Enter the relevant comment in the Comment box provided when you attach
the file to the page.
RELATED TOPICS
Displaying an Image
Gallery Macro
Image File Formats
Attaching Files to a Page
Working with Macros
Thumbnail
You can have Confluence automatically make a thumbnail of any inline image that is attached to a page.
Clicking on the image will pop up a window containing the full-size image.
!waterfall.jpg|thumbnail!
Image Gallery
The {gallery} macro creates a gallery of thumbnails from all of the images that are attached to a page,
titling each with the appropriate attachment comment.
A Interface New
waterfall for user New
just off deleting interface Confluence
Highway unwanted for search
1, referrer global interface
California. statistics permissions
The Tip Macro allows you to highlight a tip for the visitor.
Tip Macro
Optional Parameters
RELATED TOPICS
Usage
{userlister:groups=*}
Parameters
Examples
Listing all Users
Here is an example that lists all the users registered on your Confluence site.
{userlister:groups=*}
Specifying a Group
Here is an example that lists the users that belong to the group 'my-staff'.
{userlister:groups=my-staff}
In order to make this feature functional, a System Administrator needs to enable the User Log In
Listener for your Confluence site.
Here is an example that lists all currently online users in the 'my-staff' group.
When the parameter 'online=true' is used, Confluence uses a context listener to generate the list of
online users. A context listener is a J2EE term for something that listens for events in the application
server. We listen for session open and close events, so a user is 'online' if they have a session on the
application server. Some application servers don't correctly despatch close events for sessions – in
these cases, the list of online users may be misleading.
RELATED TOPICS
The Warning Macro allows you to highlight a warning note to the visitor.
Warning Macro
Optional Parameters
RELATED TOPICS
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to include macros in your page.
The Welcome Macro allows you to include the Confluence site welcome message in your page.
The welcome message is configured by a Confluence administrator from the Administration Console.
Welcome Macro
RELATED TOPICS
Each space in Confluence can publish its own news. News items may be announcements, journal entries,
status reports or any other timely information you would categorise as 'news' pertaining to a space. News
items are also known as 'blog posts'.
News items for a space are contained in the 'News' tab under the Browse Space view of a space.
Confluence catalogues the news items chronologically and allows you to browse news for the space by
navigating a calendar.
Creating and editing a news item is just as easy as creating and editing any other page in Confluence.
View news
Add news
Edit news
Link to news
Delete news
RELATED TOPICS
1.
Click the 'Add News' link
located at the top of every page in the space. This will bring up the 'Add News' screen.
2. Enter a title for your news item in the 'Title' text field at the top.
3. Enter your content in the text-entry box using Confluence markup or Rich Text as you would for any
other page in Confluence.
4. Add labels if you want to categorise information this way.
5. If you want to backdate your news item, click 'edit' next to 'Posting Day', as shown in the
screenshot below.
You can set the date to earlier than today, but you cannot set it to a future date. And you can
only change the date when creating the news item, not when editing a news item.
6. Preview and click 'Save'.
You can view your news item by going to the 'News' tab under the 'Browse Space' view of the space.
RELATED TOPICS
To delete news, you require 'Remove News' permission which is assigned by a space administrator from
the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
To delete a page,
Handy Hint
Deleted news items are stored in the trash and can be recovered by a space administrator.
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing News
Adding News
Editing News
Linking to News
To edit a news item, you require 'Create News' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'News' tab. A list of the most recent news items within the space is presented. A calendar
allows you to browse other news items. Locate the news item you wish to edit and click its title. This
will open up the news item.
3. Click the 'Edit' tab. This will bring up the 'Edit' screen. Use regular Confluence Markup to edit the
news item.
4. 'Preview' your changes if desired, and click 'Update'.
Editing a news item is similar to editing any other page in Confluence. However, there are a few things to
keep in mind:
• You cannot change the date of an existing news item, but you can backdate when adding a news
item.
• You cannot move a news item to another space.
• A news item has no parent.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to link to a news item. You can also read about including blog posts on your page.
You need to edit in 'Wiki Markup' mode to create a link to a news item.
You need to know the title of the news item as well as the date on which it was created.
Where:
'/2007/06/25' is the date the news item was published.
'Sample News' is the title of the news item.
Examples of Use
[http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/2007/06/25/Sample+News]
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/2007/06/25/Sample+News
[my blog|http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/2007/06/25/Sample+News]
my blog
Note: You must provide the entire path to the news item.
my blog
You can also link to a whole day's news items, just by leaving out the news item's title at the end of the link.
[my blog|DOC:2007/06/25]
my blog
Linking to a news item that has not been created yet will not result in a link. News items are very
tightly bound to the time at which they were created, soit makes no sense to link to them before
they exist.
Try the Blog Posts macro for an in-page display of news items
If you'd rather show a dynamic list of news items on your page, instead of a link to the news items,
try the Blog Posts macro.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'News' tab. This will display the latest news items in the space along with the date of each
item and the name of its author.
Use the Calendar to help you find other news items in the space. Days which have news items are
underlined to indicate that they link to a view of all the news items posted on that day.
When you are viewing a single news item, you'll see links below the calendar to the next and previous
news items.
RELATED TOPICS
In Confluence, you can organise pages into a hierarchy of parent and child pages. Pages in such a
hierarchy are called a page family.
Page families are a simple but effective way of categorising content. Confluence makes navigation of your
site easier by providing links forward and backwards through the page hierarchy.
A parent page is at the topmost level of that hierarchy. Subpages are called child pages or children.
RELATED TOPICS
The breadcrumbs of a page display its location in the content hierarchy of Confluence. They trace the
path from the current page back to the dashboard allowing easy navigation up and down the page
hierarchy.
If you glance up at the breadcrumbs region of this page, above the title, you will see that it reads:
Dashboard > Confluence > ... > Working with Page Families > Breadcrumbs
This means that this page is a child of 'Working with Page Families' which in turn is a part of the space
'Confluence'. The three dots '...' mean that there are other parent spaces between 'Confluence' and
'Working with Page Families'.
RELATED TOPICS
In Confluence, you can organise pages into a hierarchy of parent and child pages. Pages in such a
hierarchy are called a page family.
Page families are a simple but effective way of categorising content. Confluence makes navigation of your
site easier by providing links forward and backwards through the page hierarchy.
A parent page is at the topmost level of that hierarchy. Subpages are called child pages or children.
• Move the page to a new space, if that's what you want. You do this while editing a page.
• Move the page to a new position in the space's tree view. You do this while editing a page or while
viewing the space's Tree view.
RELATED TOPICS
Moving a Page
Moving Pages within a Space
Page Families
Viewing a Page's Family
Viewing a Page's Location within a Space
Viewing Hierarchy of Pages within a Space
Viewing Children of a Page
Working with Pages
To create a child page, you require 'Create Pages' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
1. View an existing page. Go to the 'Add' menu and select 'Page'. By default, Confluence adds the new
page as a child of the first.
2. Go to the 'Add' menu and select 'Page' from anywhere else in Confluence, then move the page to its
required 'Location' while still in edit mode — refer to the instructions on moving a page.
3. Click the 'Add Child Page' link that is displayed when you choose to 'show' children of a page.
This option is available only when the page already has children.
RELATED TOPICS
To view a page's family, go to the page and click on the 'Info' tab.
The page's parent and children, if any exist, are listed under the heading 'Hierarchy'.
If there are more than 10 children, only the first 10 will be shown by default. To view all the children,
click 'Show all'. Click 'Hide all' to hide them again.
Note
If no parent is displayed for the page, either the page sits in the root directory of the space or its
parent has been deleted.
RELATED TOPICS
To view a page's location within the hierarchy of its space, click on the 'View in hierarchy' link at the
bottom of the page.
Alternately, the Breadcrumbs or the 'you are here' path at the top every page display the page's location
in the space's hierarchy.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence displays the children of a page, if any exist, in one of two views configured globally by a site
administrator:
Show : In this view, a list of the page's children is displayed as links at the bottom of the page. Clicking
on a link will take you to the corresponding child page.
Hide: In this view, the list of the page's children is hidden when you view the page. A link at the bottom
of the page tells you how many children the page has. Clicking on this link will display the list of its
children.
Note
Confluence defaults the view to 'Show' or 'Hide' children based on what your preference was on your
last visit to the site.
RELATED TOPICS
The 'Tree' view on the 'Browse Space' page displays the hierarchy of the pages within the space. It is a
useful way of viewing all the parent-child relationships between pages in the space at a single glance.
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
2. Go to the 'Pages' tab and open the 'Tree' view.
3. Click the '+' sign next to each page family to open the branches of the tree. This shows you the
children of the page.
RELATED TOPICS
In Confluence, you can organise pages into a hierarchy of parent and child pages. Pages in such a
hierarchy are called a page family.
Page families are a simple but effective way of categorising content. Confluence makes navigation of your
site easier by providing links forward and backwards through the page hierarchy.
A parent page is at the topmost level of that hierarchy. Subpages are called child pages or children.
For example, in your organisation, you may have a space for 'Fun'. Under this space you could have the
following pages:
The 'Recreation' page in this hierarchy is the parent page and the 'Sports', 'Music' and 'Up Coming Trips'
pages are its child pages. Together, they comprise a page family.
Confluence will only allow you to create page families that are a simple tree. This means that you can
create any number of nested families but a child can have only one parent.
RELATED TOPICS
Pages are the primary means of storing and sharing information in Confluence. Pages are contained
within spaces.
• Use spaces to organise your wiki content into your primary logical groups. For example, you could
have a space per team, per product or per department.
• Use pages to organise your content into lower-level groups. For example, you could have a page for
a particular team activity, or for a feature in a product, or for a chapter in a book. Then add more
child pages to contain lower-level details if necessary.
RELATED PAGES
A comment is a remark, question, or any other additional information you wish to add to a page
pertaining to the topic the page covers.
Comments are a means by which a community of users can interact with each other on the site.
View Comments
Add Comments
Link to Comments
Delete Comments
Edit a Comment
RELATED TOPICS
To add a comment, you require 'Create Comments' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
You can either add a new comment or respond to a previous comment (only available in 'threaded' view).
Use Confluence markup or the Rich Text editor to write the comment.
Your profile picture will appear next to each comment you've added. (This is true if your space uses
the Confluence Default theme.)
1. Click the 'Add Comment' link near the bottom of the page.
2. The comments box opens up. Type in your text.
3. Click the 'Preview' tab to see a preview of your comment.
4. Click the 'Post' button to save your comment and display it on the page.
To respond to a comment,
1. Click the 'Reply to this' link located below the text of a comment.
2. This will open up a new comments box. Type in your text and click 'Post'.
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing Comments
To delete a comment from a page, you require 'Remove Comments' permission which is assigned by a
space administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
To delete a comment,
Warning
RELATED TOPICS
Viewing Comments
Adding a Comment
Linking to Comments
Comments are editable if you are using Confluence version 2.4 or later.
You can edit any comments that you have created. Space administrators can edit all comments within
their space.
A note will indicate that a comment has been edited (unless the comment was edited within 10 minutes
of being created). This ensures that comment threads retain their continuity — e.g. if you reply to
another person's comment, and they later edit their comment, a note will indicate that the other person's
comment has been changed.
To edit a comment,
• Go to the comment and click the 'Edit' button. You can use Confluence markup or the Rich Text
editor to edit a comment.
RELATED TOPICS
Commenting on a Page
Viewing Comments
Linking to Comments
Deleting Comments
1. Click on 'Permalink' or the date located below the text of the comment within the comments box.
You will notice in the address bar of your browser that the URL displayed ends in a series of
numerals.
2. Copy only the numerals.
3. Click the 'Edit' tab of the page from which you want to link to the comment.
4. Paste the numerals between square brackets (as you would when you create any link in
Confluence), and then include the dollar sign '$' in front of the numerals.
Example
1. Right click on 'Permalink' or the date located below the text of the comment within the comments
box.
2. Copy the link location of the comment. Alternately, click on 'Permalink' or the date and copy the URL
displayed in the address bar of your browser.
3. Use this URL to link to the comment from your web page.
RELATED TOPICS
Commenting on a Page
Adding a Comment
Working with Links
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eleifend augue. Integer gravida sodales leo. Nunc vehicula neque ac erat. Vivamus non nisl. Fusce ac
magna. Suspendisse euismod libero eget mauris.
Comments in Confluence are displayed in one of two views which is configured globally by a site
administrator:
• Threaded - this view shows the comments in a hierarchy of responses. Each subsequent reply to a
comment is indented to indicate the relationships between the comments. See screenshot 1.
• Flat - this view displays all the comments in one single list and does not indicate the relationships
between comments.
• Show
° the page's comments are visible below its contents when you view the page.
° a comments box at the bottom of the page allows you to post a new comment.
• Hide
° the page's comments are hidden when you view the page. A link at the bottom of the
page tells you if the page has comments. Clicking this link will display the comments. See
screenshot 2.
° to post a new comment, click on 'Add a new comment'.
Note
Confluence defaults the view to 'Show' or 'Hide' comments based on what your preference was on
your last visit to the site.
RELATED TOPICS
Commenting on a Page
Adding a Comment
Linking to Comments
Deleting Comments
Comments on articles will appear by default in threaded form, below the page content.
Confluence allows you to 'collapse', 'expand', 'show' and 'hide' comments on a page.
• Collapse
° Comments are all shrunk to a single line, showing the first 60 characters. This allows easy
'Reply'.
• Expand
° Comments are returned from the collapsed state to the usual threaded view, showing the full
bottom of the page indicates whether the page currently has any comments.
• Show
° The page's comments will become visible below the page content.
° Comment links at the bottom of each comment and the page allow you to post or manage
comments.
Comments in Confluence are displayed in one of two views which is configured globally by a site
administrator:
• Threaded - this view shows the comments in a hierarchy of responses. Each subsequent reply to a
comment is indented to indicate the relationships between the comments.
• Flat - this view displays all the comments in one single list and does not indicate the relationships
between comments.
Note
Confluence defaults the view to 'Show' or 'Hide' comments based on what your preference was on
your last visit to the site.
RELATED TOPICS
Commenting on a Page
Adding a Comment
Linking to Comments
Deleting Comments
Sometimes, two or more people may edit a page at the same time. When this happens, Confluence will
do its best to ensure that nobody's changes are lost.
How will I know if someone else is editing the same page as I am?
If another user is editing the same page as you, Confluence will display a message above your edit screen
letting you know who the other user is and when the last edit was made.
What happens if two of us are editing the same page and the other user saves before I do?
If someone else has saved the page before you, when you click 'Save', Confluence will check if there are
any conflicts between your changes and theirs. If there are no conflicting changes, Confluence will merge
both the edits successfully. If there are any conflicts, Confluence will display them for you and give you
the option to either 'Overwrite' the other user's changes, 'Merge your changes' manually, or 'Discard'
them.
For example, Alice and Bob both edit the same page at the same time.
If Alice clicks save before Bob, Bob is now effectively editing an out-of-date version of the page.
When Bob clicks save, Confluence will examine his changes to see if any overlap with Alice's. If the
changes do not overlap (i.e. Alice and Bob edited different parts of the page), Bob's changes will be
merged with Alice's automatically.
If Bob's changes overlap with Alice's, Confluence will display an error message to Bob showing
where Alice has changed the page, and giving Bob the options to overwrite Alice's changes with his
own, to re-edit the document to incorporate Alice's work, or to cancel his own changes entirely.
RELATED TOPICS
You can copy a page, to create a duplicate of the page content. You will need to rename the page,
because a page name must be unique within a space.
You need 'Create Pages' permission, which is assigned by a space administrator from the Space
Administration screens. See space permissions or contact a space administrator for more information.
To copy a page,
• Copying a page will duplicate all of the original page's attachments and labels, but will not copy
comments from the original page.
• This method of copying a page does not copy the child pages. Please add your vote to issue
CONF-2814 if you'd like to see this improvement.
• You can copy an entire space, including all pages in the space (parents and children) — refer to
these instructions on copying a space.
• Consider using the WebDav plugin to move or copy a page hierarchy from one space to
another, provided that none of the page names already exist in the target space.
To create a page, you need the 'Create Pages' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See space permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
1. Add a link, specifying the name of a page which does not exist. See example below.
2. Save the page which contains the undefined link. Confluence indicates undefined links by colouring
them red.
3. When you (or another user) click on the link, the 'Add Page' screen appears.
4. You can then follow the steps outlined above to enter the page name, add content and save the
page.
• Confluence does not accept the following characters in the title of a page:
:, @, /, \, ^, |, #, $, ;, ~, [, ], {, }, <, >
• Page names must be unique within a space.
RELATED TOPICS
Use the 'Choose a Page' option when you want to locate a page in the site to set as a parent page.
To choose a page,
Note
You cannot create a new page using this option.
RELATED TOPICS
To delete an attachment, you require 'Remove Attachments' permission which is assigned by a space
administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
To delete an attachment,
RELATED TOPICS
To delete a page, you require 'Remove Pages' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screens. See Space Permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
To delete a page,
Handy Hint
Deleted pages are stored in the trash and can be recovered by a space administrator.
RELATED TOPICS
1. View the page and click the "view change" link displayed after the "last edited by" information.
2. In the box on the left-hand side of the "compared to", click on the "Version ## by Username" to
show the full outdated version.
3. Click "<< View previous version" to scroll back through the outdated versions until you find the one
you would like to link, and copy the URL from your address bar. This link is of the format http://
confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=12345
These links inform the users that what they are viewing is out of date and provide a link to the current
edition.
To edit an existing page, you require 'Edit Pages' permission which is assigned by a space administrator
from the Space Administration screen. See Space permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
1. Go to the page and click the 'Edit' tab. This is only displayed if you have permission to edit the page.
This will bring up the edit screen in either the Wiki Markup or the Rich Text mode, whichever is your
current default.
2. Make changes to the content or add new content as you would when you create a new page. Click
the tabs to switch between 'Rich Text' and 'Wiki Markup' edit modes. You can also use a combination
of the two editors. Confluence retains changes made in one mode when you switch to the other.
3. Click 'Preview' to view your changes. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
In Confluence versions 2.4 and later, you can easily e-mail a Confluence page to recipients of your choice.
• 'Recipients: Confluence User(s)' — Type the name of the Confluence user (or
users, separated by commas); or click this icon to select a user from the list:
Optional Feature
This feature is disabled by default, to prevent it from being used as a tool for spamming
or harrassment. If you want to enable the e-mailing of pages, please ask your Confluence
administrator.
Instructions for enabling this feature can be found here: Enabling the 'Mail Page' plugin
Alternative functionality
There is already an existent feature request in JIRA to allow for Page MailTo functionality via a button
click. Please add your votes to that issue.
RELATED TOPICS
RELATED TOPICS
You can default to either 'Rich Text' or 'Wiki Markup' modes of editing depending on your preference.
1. Go to the edit tab of the page. This will open up the page in your current default mode.
2. If the current edit mode is not your default, you can make it your default by clicking the 'Make
Default' link beside the tabs.
RELATED TOPICS
This page tells you how to move a page which you are currently adding or editing. Using this method,
you can only move the page which you are busy adding or editing. Alternatively, you can follow the
instructions to move pages on the space's Tree view.
Confluence allows you to present your pages in any order (sequence) you choose. Read more about the
sequential order of pages.
On this page:
Moving a Page
To move a page within the tree,
You can change the order of the pages — simply move the page to its new position while editing the page
or while viewing pages in the space's Tree view.
By default, Confluence will present your pages in alphabetical order. When you move a page to a different
position, the order becomes manual for the affected page family.
When ordering pages alphabetically, Confluence actually applies a more sophisticated 'natural' order
rather than a straight alphabetical order. The natural order handles numeric values correctly when
doing string comparisons.
Now let's consider what happens when you add a page to a page family, by creating a new page or by
moving or copying a page into the family:
• If the page family's order is alphabetical, the new page will appear in alphabetical order too.
• If the page family's order is manual, the new page will appear at the bottom of the list of pages in
the family.
Once the order has been set to manual, you cannot set it back to alphabetical. There is an open
request (CONF-10499) to allow reversion to alphabetical order. If you would like to see this
developed, please vote for the request.
RELATED TOPICS
Here's what the Confluence edit page looks like Rich Text mode:
Note
The options available to you in the 'Edit' mode of a page depend on the permissions granted to you
by the space administrator.
RELATED TOPICS
Here's what the Confluence edit page looks like in Wiki Markup mode:
Note
The options available to you in the 'Edit' mode of a page depend on the permissions granted to you
by the space administrator.
RELATED TOPICS
Note
Note that in Confluence, your view of a space depends on the permissions granted to you by the
space administrator.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on 'Trash' from the left panel. A list of deleted pages and emails for the space is displayed.
4. Click on the 'Purge' link beside a page or else click on 'Purge all' to permanently clear all deleted
pages and emails.
RELATED TOPICS
Deleting a page
Restoring a Deleted Page
A change comment is a short description that details the changes made to a page during an edit. Change
comments are a useful way of keeping track of the history of a page.
Once a comment has been added, it becomes visible in the view mode of the page, so that users are
aware of the most recent changes made to a page. If a comment has been recorded, you will see a link to
'Show Comment' below the page title. Click on the link to view the comment.
The change comments for a page are recorded under the 'History' of a page.
RELATED TOPICS
To rename an existing page, you require 'Edit Pages' permission which is assigned by a space
administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
• Confluence will automatically change all internal links to point to your new page title.
• Explicit references to your page title in macros will not be changed. You need to change these
manually.
• Links from external sites will be broken, unless they use the page's permanent URL.
To rename a page,
1. Go to the page and click the 'Edit' tab. This is only displayed if you have permission to edit the page.
2. This will bring up the 'Edit' screen, as shown below. The page title is at the top of the edit panel,
just under the 'Edit' tab.
3. Change the page name.
4. Click 'Save'.
RELATED TOPICS
Linking Pages
Editing an Existing Page
Working with Pages Overview
When you restore a page, you are retrieving it from 'Trash' to the same location in the space where it
existed before it was deleted.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on 'Trash' from the left panel. A list of deleted pages and emails for the space is displayed.
4. Click on the 'Restore' link beside the page you want to restore.
Handy Hint
If a new page has already been created in that space with the same name as the deleted page, you
will be given an option to rename the page before it is restored.
RELATED TOPICS
Deleting a page
Purging Deleted Pages
Confluence allows you to present your pages in any order (sequence) you choose. The position of a page
is reflected in the following places:
You can change the order of the pages — simply move the page to its new position while editing the page
or while viewing pages in the space's Tree view.
By default, Confluence will present your pages in alphabetical order. When you move a page to a different
position, the order becomes manual for the affected page family.
When ordering pages alphabetically, Confluence actually applies a more sophisticated 'natural' order
rather than a straight alphabetical order. The natural order handles numeric values correctly when
doing string comparisons.
Now let's consider what happens when you add a page to a page family, by creating a new page or by
moving or copying a page into the family:
• If the page family's order is alphabetical, the new page will appear in alphabetical order too.
• If the page family's order is manual, the new page will appear at the bottom of the list of pages in
the family.
Once the order has been set to manual, you cannot set it back to alphabetical. There is an open
request (CONF-10499) to allow reversion to alphabetical order. If you would like to see this
developed, please vote for the request.
RELATED TOPICS
Overview of Pages
Overview of Page Families
Moving a Page
Moving Pages within a Space
The 'Info' tab of a page is your window to page level information. It displays:
1. Page Details: Title, author, date of creation, date of last modification and the tiny link of the page.
2. Page Hierarchy: Parent-child relationships of the page.
3. Page Permissions: Whether there are any page-level security restrictions that apply to the page.
4. Recent Changes: Links to the five most recent versions of the page along with the name of the
editor and the date of modification.
5. View History: All the versions of the page in reverse chronological order, with an option to compare
versions or to restore a previous version.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence tracks histories of changes to pages by maintaining a version of the page each time it is
modified. It is easy to view changes between different versions and to restore a previous version if
required.
RELATED TOPICS
RELATED TOPICS
Restoring an older version creates a copy of that version. For example, in the above screenshot, if you
selected v.17 and clicked 'Restore this version', a copy of v.17 would be created. This copy would be v.19,
and would become the current version.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click the 'View Change' link at the top of each page below the page title. This highlights the changes
between the current and previous versions of the page.
Or
2. Go to the page and click on the 'Info' tab. The five most recent versions of the page are listed along
with the date of their modification and the name of the modifying author under the heading, 'Recent
Changes'.
3. Click on 'View changes' beside the desired version. The changes from the previous version are
highlighted.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence will autosave the page you are editing periodically, and maintain a copy of it as a draft in the
event that some system failure or error prevents you from saving your changes.
• Drafts are created while adding and editing a page or news item.
• A draft is only available to you if you have not been able to save your changes. You cannot create a
draft explicitly.
• Drafts are listed in the 'Drafts' tab of your profile. Only you can view and edit your drafts.
• Once you have resumed editing a draft, or chosen to discard it, it is removed from this view.
Read the Drafts FAQ for more information on working with drafts.
RELATED TOPICS
This page covers some of the common questions you may have while using drafts. Read Working with
Drafts Overview for more information.
1. What is a draft?
2. How often are drafts saved?
3. Where can I see my drafts?
4. I lost my changes before I could add the page. What do I do?
5. What happens if I am editing the draft of a page that has since been updated?
6. If I click one of the other page tabs when I am editing a page, will I lose my changes?
7. How do I configure the time for how often drafts are saved?
What is a draft?
A draft is an autosaved version of the page which is created by Confluence when you have made changes
to a page but have failed to save it.
By default, Confluence saves a draft of your page once every thirty seconds. A site administrator can
configure how often drafts are saved from the Administration Console.
Your drafts are listed under the 'Drafts' Tab when you go to your Profile.
Confluence will save a draft of the page even if you haven't successfully added it yet.
1. Go to the 'Drafts' tab of your 'Profile'. A draft of the page will be listed with an option to 'Resume
Editing'.
If you had not entered a page title, the draft will be listed without a title as well.
2. When you next click 'Add Page' in that space, Confluence will ask you if you want to resume editing the
page that wasn't saved.
What happens if I am editing the draft of a page that has since been updated?
If I click one of the other page tabs when I am editing a page, will I lose my changes?
No. Whenever you click on any of the page tabs, Confluence will automatically save a draft. When you
click on the 'Edit' tab again, Confluence will let you know that a version of the page you are editing was
unsaved and give you the option to resume editing.
*How do I configure the time for how often drafts are saved?*
A site administrator can configure a different time setting for how often drafts are to be saved from the
Administration Console > General Configuration.
RELATED TOPICS
NOTE
While the Rich Text editor permits all formatting options possible with Wiki Markup, you will still
need to use Wiki Markup for other more complex functions like macros.
Help on the Wiki Markup language while you are writing a page
A quick notation guide, Notation Help, appears beside the edit screen when you choose the Wiki
Markup edit tab. You can then click the full notation guide link in the help window to view the full
Notation Guide. This shows you the entire list of formatting and other complex operations that
Confluence's notation permits, along with the markup detailing how to perform them.
RELATED TOPICS
If you are using Confluence Hosted, there are no personal spaces. A Confluence Hosted user does have
a profile, including the ability to upload a profile picture. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
In Confluence, content is organised into spaces. There are two types of spaces:
• Global spaces are areas on your site into which you can group content items (pages, attachments,
news, etc) based on any theme or topic of your choice. For example, you may want separate areas
on your site for each team or project within your organisation. In Confluence, you can set up a
different space for each team or project. You can build content for each of these spaces individually,
decide who its users are, and even archive mail separately within each. There is no limit to the
number of global spaces you can create within Confluence!
• Personal spaces belong to particular users, and rather than being listed on the Dashboard (see
below), are available from the People Directory. They can contain pages and news items, be
searched and browsed. They can be kept private, or opened up so the whole world can view and edit
them, just like global spaces.
Confluence treats each space as an independently managed wiki. This means that each space functions
autonomously within your site.
Each space:
• Has its own pages, news items, comments, bookmarks (if the Bookmarks Plugin is enabled), RSS
feeds and mail (mail applies to global spaces only).
• Has its own access control settings, so you can set different levels of access to different spaces.
• Can be separately exported to PDF , HTML or XML.
You can view all the global spaces within a site via the Dashboard. You also group global spaces together
into 'Team Spaces' or 'My Spaces' to enable easy access to the content that is most relevant to you. See
Customising the Dashboard.
'My' spaces are spaces that you have nominated as your favourites.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator. All the
options pertaining to the management of a space are listed in the left panel. Click on a link to take
you to the corresponding screen.
For personal spaces, the options available are divided into three categories under these headings:
1. Space Operations
• Edit a space's details
• Edit space labels and team labels
• Remove a space
• Purge or restore content from trash
2. Security
• View or set space permissions
• View restricted pages
3. Look and Feel
• Apply a theme
• Change the colour scheme
• Edit the space's layouts
Note that you need to be a space administrator to perform administrative functions relating to a global
space.
For global spaces, the options available are divided into five categories under these headings:
RELATED TOPICS
Browsing a space
Working with Spaces Overview
• Space-wide views of the content of the space — pages, news, labels, attachments, bookmarks and
mail.
• Summary information about the space.
• Advanced space management tools.
• Tools to administer the space (for space administrators only).
The components of the Browse Space view are organised into a number of blue tabs.
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
The tabs that are displayed will depend on your Confluence site configuration, the type of space you
are viewing and the space permissions granted to you for the space.
1. Pages
• View pages alphabetically
• View recently updated content
• See tree view of pages
More about Working with pages
2. Labels
• View labels
3. Attachments
• Find an attachment
• View details of an attachment
More about Working with attachments
4. Mail
• View mail for this space
• Fetch new mail
• Delete mail
More about Working with mail
5. Bookmarks
• Viewing Bookmarks
More about working with bookmarks
6. News
• View news items for this space
More about Working with news
7. Activity
• View space activity
8. Advanced
• View space details
• Edit space details
• Manage orphaned pages
• Manage undefined pages
• Adding a TemplateManage page templates
• Export a space
• Subscribe to RSS feeds within Confluence
• Watch a space
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the Dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab and click 'Edit Space Details' in the left-hand panel. This brings up a
new screen where you can:
• Enter a different name for the space.
• Enter or modify the space description.
• Select a new home page for the space from the drop-down menu. This is the default page to
which users are directed when they click the link to the space from the Dashboard.
If you set this field to blank (no selection) then the default home page will be the 'Pages'
tab of the 'Browse Space' page.
3. Click 'Save'.
Note
RELATED TOPICS
An orphaned page is a page without any incoming links. What this means is that unless you know that
this page exists, you are not likely to come across it in the space during the natural course of navigation.
When you are working in a large space with a number of pages, it is difficult to keep track of all of them.
An orphaned page may be redundant or need to be referred to from another page. Confluence allows you
to view all the orphaned pages in a space so you can "tidy up" the space by either deleting pages or by
reorganising them.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click on 'Orphaned Pages' from the left panel.
You can:
RELATED TOPICS
In Confluence, you can create links to pages that you intend to create later. This is a useful facility as it
allows you to create links first and enter content for those pages later. These are 'undefined links' and are
indicated with this sign to
remind you that those pages need to be created.
Because you may be working with a large number of pages each with a number of links, this view gives a
consolidated report of all the undefined pages so you can manage your space better.
RELATED TOPICS
The tree view displays the parent-child relationships of the pages in the space.
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
2. Go to the 'Pages' tab and open the 'Tree' view.
3. A tree view opens. Click the '+' sign next to each page family to open the branches of the tree.
RELATED TOPICS
Page Families
Viewing a Page's Location within a Space
Moving Pages within a Space
Viewing Children of a Page
Working with Pages
Use this view when you are looking for a specific page in a space and you know its title.
Handy Hint
If you know the title of a page, you might find it faster using the Quick Search.
RELATED TOPICS
The 'Recently Updated' view is a useful way of keeping track of the changes being made in a space. It
displays links to the most recently added or modified content within the space including pages, news
items, mail messages and comments.
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Pages' tab and click on the link 'Recently Updated'. A list of the most recently added
or modified content in the space is displayed. Clicking on a link will open up the corresponding
document.
RELATED TOPICS
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab and click 'Space details' in the left-hand panel.
Here is an example:
RELATED TOPICS
Please see Working with Spaces Overview for information about the differences between global
spaces and personal spaces.
Generally, the easiest way to create your personal space is to follow the instructions described in Setting
up your Personal Space. However, sometimes you may need to convert an existing global space into a
personal space, particularly if you used Confluence before the introduction of personal spaces in version
2.2.
To convert a global space to a personal space, you require the following permissions:
1. Go to the global space and click the 'Browse Space' link. This is located at the top of every page in
the space, and beside the space link on the Dashboard.
2. Go to the tab 'Space Admin'. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click the 'Edit Space' link in the left panel.
4. In the 'Convert to Personal Space' section:
• Choose whether to Update Links to pages in this space (recommended).
• Choose the User whose personal space this global space will become.
• Click the 'Convert Space' button.
Note that the ability to archive mail and import pages from disk applies only to global spaces, so the 'Mail'
and 'Import' sections in the above screenshot do not appear in the 'Space Admin' tab for personal spaces.
Please see Working with Spaces Overview for information about the differences between global spaces
and personal spaces.
RELATED TOPICS
Deleting a space permanently removes the space and all of its contents.
Warning
Use caution while deleting a space, and always create an XML Space Backup before proceeding.
Once deleted, there is no way to restore a space unless you have made an XML Space Backup.
To delete a space,
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Space Admin' tab. This tab is only displayed if you are a space administrator.
3. Click on the 'Remove Space' link in the left panel under the heading 'Space Operations'.
4. Click 'OK' when the confirmation screen is brought up.
RELATED LINKS
Brief guidelines for grouping content into the Confluence space and page format used by Confluence.
Partitioning Guidelines
To ensure maintainable and logical spaces, content should be broken into spaces by:
1. Evaluating permissions across the wiki content. If members require conflicting access, for example
user 1 must access content on topics A and B, while user 2 must access content for topics B and C,
then the topics must be separated into three spaces.
2. Grouping content by topic, project or team.
For semi-static content, a space for each topic is fine. If there is a substantial project-related content that
must be exclusive to different groups, you should use separate spaces.
While each space in Confluence functions independently, Confluence is flexible enough to let you move
content easily between spaces.
RELATED LINKS
To move page families, you require 'Create Pages' permission for each page in that family. Space
Permissions are assigned by a space administrator from the Space Administration screens.
Confluence allows you to move pages around by dragging and dropping them on a tree view. When you
move a parent page, all its children are automatically moved too.
• Move the page family to a new space, if that's what you want. You do this while editing a page.
• Move the page family to a new position in the space's tree view. You do this while editing a page or
while viewing the space's Tree view.
RELATED TOPICS
You can move an attachment from its current location to any page within the site.
To move an attachment, you require 'Create Attachments' permission which is assigned by a space
administrator from the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space
administrator for more information.
To move an attachment,
1. Go to the page that contains the attachment and click on the 'Attachments' tab.
2. Click the 'Edit' link beside the attachment. This will bring up a new screen.
• Rename the attachment in the 'File Name' text field (optional).
• Update the existing comment or enter a new comment in the 'New Comment' text field
(optional).
3. Select the page to which you want to move the attachment by clicking on the Choose a Page link. A
pop-up screen allows you to locate pages anywhere within the site.
4. Against 'Update Links', select 'Yes' to ensure that any links to this attachment are maintained when
you move it. Only select 'No' if you are sure that there are no links to this attachment within the
current space.
5. Click 'OK'.
RELATED TOPICS
You can easily move pages from one space to another within Confluence.
To move a page, you require 'Create Pages' permission which is assigned by a space administrator from
the Space Administration screens. See Space permissions or contact a space administrator for more
information.
To move a page to a new space, you need to edit the page's location — refer to the instructions on
moving a page.
Handy Hint
Any links to the page from the current space will automatically be renamed to point to the page in
the new space.
RELATED TOPICS
Moving a Page
Moving Pages within a Space
Moving a family of pages from one space to another
Moving an Attachment
This page tells you how to move a page using a space's Tree view. This method allows you to move a
page, or a family of pages, within a space. Alternatively, you can follow the instructions to move a page
to a new position or to a new space while in edit mode.
Confluence allows you to present your pages in any order (sequence) you choose. Read more about the
sequential order of pages.
On this page:
Moving a Page
To move a page within the space's Tree view,
•
Click the icon next to
the space name on the Dashboard. The 'Pages' tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open
• Or go to a page in the space and select the option you want from the 'Space' menu. The
corresponding tab of the 'Browse Space' view will open.
2. Go to the 'Pages' tab and open the 'Tree' view.
3. A tree view opens. Find the page you want to move.
Hint: Click the '+' sign next to each page family to open the branches of the tree.
4. Holding down your left mouse button, click and drag the page up or down the tree. See screenshot
below.
5. While dragging the page, you see one of the following:
• A thin line between existing pages — This indicates the potential new position for the page.
Release the mouse button when the page is where you want it.
• A wide highlight over one or more existing pages — This indicates that you can drop the page
into a page family. Release the mouse button to add the page to the family. The page will
appear either in alphabetical sequence or as the last page in the family, depending on the
family's sequential order as described below.
Note: The new position of the page is saved as soon as you release the mouse button.
To cancel the move while still holding down the mouse button, press the 'Esc' key on your
keyboard.
You can change the order of the pages — simply move the page to its new position while editing the page
or while viewing pages in the space's Tree view.
By default, Confluence will present your pages in alphabetical order. When you move a page to a different
position, the order becomes manual for the affected page family.
When ordering pages alphabetically, Confluence actually applies a more sophisticated 'natural' order
rather than a straight alphabetical order. The natural order handles numeric values correctly when
doing string comparisons.
Now let's consider what happens when you add a page to a page family, by creating a new page or by
moving or copying a page into the family:
• If the page family's order is alphabetical, the new page will appear in alphabetical order too.
• If the page family's order is manual, the new page will appear at the bottom of the list of pages in
the family.
Once the order has been set to manual, you cannot set it back to alphabetical. There is an open
request (CONF-10499) to allow reversion to alphabetical order. If you would like to see this
developed, please vote for the request.
RELATED TOPICS
To set up a new global space, you require 'Create Space' permission which is assigned by a Confluence
administrator from the Administration Console. See Security or contact a Confluence administrator for
more information.
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
Your personal space is a place where you can publish your own pages and news items. Once you have set
up your personal space, Confluence users can reach it by clicking your name in the People Directory.
1. Click the 'Preferences' link located below the breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
2. This will display your Profile. Click the link 'Create Personal Space'.
Handy Hint
Once you have set up your personal space, you can return to it any time by clicking your name
(next to the word 'Welcome' at the top of the page).
RELATED TOPICS
Once you login, the list of spaces you have permission to view is displayed on your Dashboard under the
spaces section.
• Additionally, a list of personal spaces is available via the People Directory icon on the Dashboard:
Go to the Dashboard from any page on your site simply by clicking the logo beside the page title or via
the Breadcrumbs (the "you are here" path) located at the top of every page.
If you do not login, you will be treated as an 'anonymous user' and only those spaces to which an
anonymous user has 'View' permission will be displayed on the Dashboard.
Permission to a space is granted by a space administrator. See Space permissions for more information.
Handy Hint
Use the Spaces List Macro to view the list of spaces from any other page in Confluence.
RELATED TOPICS
In Confluence version 2.3 and later, statistics on each space's activity are available. These include:
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Activity' tab.
The number of pages and news posts that have been viewed, added and edited will be displayed
graphically, showing trends over a period of time, e.g.:
The top 10 most popular and most active pages and/or news posts will be listed, with a link to each, e.g.:
RELATED TOPICS
Browsing a space
Viewing Space Details
Viewing History of a Page
Tracking Updates Overview
Finding Unused Spaces
You can create a template which allows you to create an editable form. The form is displayed when a user
creates a page, so that the user can enter page content.
For example:
• Global Templates : These are defined by site administrators through the Administration Console and
are available in every space.
• Space Templates: These are defined by space administrators in the space administration screens,
and are only available in the space in which they are defined.
Global templates can only be created by site administrators, and space templates by space
administrators.
Templates are written in regular Confluence markup, using special markup to define form fields that need
to be filled in.
Here is an example:
Note
Currently, templates can only be used to create a page. Once a page is created, the template is
gone and all further editing is performed as if the template was never used. In the future, templates
will be expanded to do more interesting things such as remaining part of the page, having more
complex (and even dynamic) fields, being able to search Confluence based on the value of particular
fields, and so on.
Two popular plugins that expand on template behaviour are the Zones Plugin and Scaffolding Plugin.
Below is a comparision:
Adding a Template
Creating a Page using a Template
Editing a template
Removing a Template
User Macros
Working with Pages Overview
Working with Templates Overview
1. Click the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside the
space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab then click the 'Templates' option in the left navigation panel.
3. Click 'Add New Space Template'. This will bring up the 'Create Template' screen.
4. Enter a name for your template in the 'Name' text field and an optional description in the
'Description' text field.
5. Using regular Confluence markup and form field markup (if you are using forms), enter content in
the text-entry box as you would in any other Confluence page. For example:
6. Click 'edit' next to 'Labels' if you want to use labels to categorise information. Add your labels. These
labels will be included in all pages created using this template.
7. Preview and click 'Save'. Your template will be added to the list of space templates.
8. To view the space templates, browse the space then click the 'Templates' option in the left
navigation panel of the 'Advanced' tab.
RELATED TOPICS
Confluence allows you to create a page based on a global template (available to all spaces) or a space
template (available only to that space). This page is intended for users who have already created a
template.
If the template contains labels, the template labels will automatically be included in the new page
created from that template.
1. Click the 'Add Page' link located beside each space on the dashboard or at the top of every page in
Confluence.
2. Click the link 'Select a page template' located above the text-entry box.
This is only displayed if there are any templates defined. If you do not see this link, then there are
currently no templates defined and an administrator will have to create one before you can use it.
Clicking this link will display a list of the templates that are available in the current space.
3. Select a template and click 'Next'. This will display one of the following:
• A new page based on the template, if the template does not contain a form.
• The 'Template Variables' page where you can supply values for the variables, if the template
contains a form.
4. If the template uses a form, enter the appropriate values into the form fields and click the 'Insert
Variables' button. This will display a new page based on the template and including the variable
values you have entered.
5. Replace the words 'New Page' with the name of the page.
6. Add more content or make further changes as required.
7. Click the 'Save' button.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Template
Editing a template
Removing a Template
Form Field Markup for Templates
Browsing a space
To edit a template,
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Advanced' tab.
3. Click the 'Templates' link in the left-hand column. A list of templates for the space is displayed.
4. Click on the 'Edit' link beside the chosen template. This will bring up the 'edit' screen for the
template.
5. Make changes or add new content as you would when you add a template, using form field markup,
if required.
6. Click 'Update' to save your changes.
RELATED TOPICS
Adding a Template
Creating a Page using a Template
Working with Templates
Working with Pages
1. Click on the 'Browse Space' link for the space. This is located at the top of every page and beside
the space link on the dashboard.
2. Go to the 'Templates' tab. A list of templates for the space is displayed.
3. Click on the 'Remove' link beside the template you wish to delete.
4. Confirm your action by clicking 'OK' when the confirmation screen is brought up.
Warning
Deleted templates cannot be restored.
RELATED TOPICS
Editing a template
Adding a Template
Creating a Page using a Template
Working with Templates
Working with Pages
This document tells you how to troubleshoot problems and obtain technical support.
On this page:
Troubleshooting a Problem
If you have a problem with Confluence, please follow these steps:
1. If you are not a Confluence administrator, report your problem to the person in charge of your
Confluence site and ask them to follow up on the issue.
2. Check our Frequently Asked Questions for a solution to your problem.
3. If you are having problems configuring a feature, please take a look at the appropriate guides:
• Confluence Installation Guide
• Confluence Setup Guide
• Administrators Guide
• Configuration Guide
• Database Configuration
4. If your issue is related to your database or application server, take a look at the Confluence
Configuration Tips.
If the above documentation does not solve your problem, you should create a support request. If you
believe you are experiencing a bug, you may wish to create a bug report instead. Instructions for both
are given below.
If you have a plugin-related issue, please check whether the plugin is supported by Atlassian. Visit
the plugin's home page in the Extension space, and check for the 'Atlassian Supported' logo. If the
plugin is not supported by Atlassian, you will need to contact the author directly.
• Complete the support request form via your Confluence Administration Console. The advantage
of this method is that Confluence will create the support ticket and attach the relevant system
information and logs for you.
• Raise a support ticket directly via our support site on the internet.
This method is recommended, provided that SMTP email is set up on your Confluence instance.
The advantage of this method is that Confluence will create the support ticket and attach the relevant
system information and logs for you.
You can also use this method to append system information to an existing support ticket.
You can view the status of your support request and add any additional information required by
visiting the Atlassian Support System at any time.
If your Confluence instance is not configured with SMTP mail or your Confluence instance is not running,
you can raise a support ticket via the Atlassian Support System:
1. Create a zip of your Confluence logs to attach to the ticket. Refer to Working with Confluence Logs
for information about the log files.
2. If your problem concerns user management or performance, please take a look at the additional
requirements in Requesting External User Management Support or Requesting Performance Support.
3. If you do not already have a free Atlassian support account, create one here.
4. Log in to https://support.atlassian.com and select 'Create New Issue'.
5. Lodge a detailed description of your problem in the new support ticket.
6. Fill in all applicable information about your system, such as application server, database, etc.
7. If Confluence is running, go to the 'System Information' screen in your Administration Console and
copy the text of your system information into the ticket.
8. Once your ticket is lodged, wait to be notified by email of updates. If your production instance of
Confluence is experiencing a critical problem, jump on Live Support and ask to have your issue
reviewed immediately.
The Atlassian support team will confirm your bug and lodge a bug report. Alternatively, you can log a bug
report directly by confirming it according to these instructions:
Check the headings below. If one of the headings matches your problem, follow the instructions. If the
problem does not fall under any category, follow the general instructions instead.
If you are having issues with Wiki Markup or page content not being shown as expected:
1. Create a new page on our Test Space and try to duplicate the issue there.
2. If the problem recurs, log the new bug here.
3. Paste the web address (URL) of the Test Space page along with the process you used to duplicate
the problem.
Please lodge a support request with your configuration information and numbered instructions on how to
reproduce the issue.
Please lodge a support request with your user management configuration and numbered instructions on
how to reproduce the bug.
1. If Confluence will not run, please log the problem as a support request instead.
2. Attempt to replicate the bug:
• Download the latest version of Confluence Standalone.
• Install the Standalone with the appropriate database and the demonstration site.
• Try to duplicate your problem on the default setup with the demonstration data.
3. If the issue does not occur, you should open a support ticket.
4. If the issue does occur, log the new bug here along with the information you used to duplicate it.
5. Once your issue is lodged, wait to be notified by email of updates. If your production instance of
Confluence is experiencing a critical problem, jump on Live Support and ask to have your issue
reviewed immediately.
RELATED TOPICS
Introduction
Atlassian may request a copy of the entities.xml file from a customer's exported zip file, in order to
diagnose database corruption, or to find a bug in Confluence.
If your data is confidential, you can run this program over your entities.xml file, removing all your data
and leaving only the structure of the export.
Usage
This release of the export cleaner uses STX, a fast and efficient XML transformation technology. It should
not require a lot of memory to run, even for a large backup.
Development
• Source code
• Maven repository.
Confluence uses the open source persistence framework Hibernate. This page tells you how to configure
Confluence's logging to report individual SQL requests being sent to the database by Hibernate. It is
useful for troubleshooting:
Since the 2.7 release, you can also enable SQL logging at runtime via the Administration Console
— read the instructions. This runtime option does not allow you to enable logging of SQL parameter
values.
To enable detailed SQL logging in Confluence, you need to modify log4j.properties, located in
confluence/WEB-INF/classes.
If you require support assistance with a database related problem, it is advisable to enable detailed
SQL logging prior sending us the log files. It will assists us determining what SQL queries were
running during the reported problem.
If the entries mentioned below are not defined in the log4j.properties file, you can manually add
the entries to the file in the 'Hibernate Logging' section.
<!-- it can be useful to disable batching during debugging, as HSQLDB doesn't report the exact
statement which fails in batch mode -->
<prop key="hibernate.jdbc.batch_size">0</prop>
Related Topic
Online Documentation
Support Requests
Feature Requests
Live Support
Live Support is available during US, Malaysian and Australian business hours, 19 hours a day, Monday to
Friday. Downtime is 9am to 2pm GMT. Click to see 9am and 2pm GMT in your local time. Live Support is
unavailable on weekends.
If you are experiencing a problem, you should always create a support request before using Live Support.
Phone Support
To speak to a support member about critical support issues, contact us during Sydney or San Fransisco
business hours.
If Confluence stops responding, or is performing poorly, you should create a thread dump to help
Atlassian determine the cause of the problem.
This will show the state of each thread in the JVM, including a stack trace and information about what
locks that thread is holding and waiting for.
Windows Users
Alternatively, if you are not running Confluence as a service, click on the console and press
<CTRL>+BREAK
kill -3 <pid>
Note: This will not kill your server (so long as you included the "-3" option, no space in between).
The thread dump will be printed to Confluence's standard output (catalina.out).
• Samurai
• Thread Dump Analyzer TDA TDA 1.0 Final can be obtained from the java.net
If you are using Confluence Hosted, please note that some Confluence features only apply to the
installed version (see the feature comparison). Also please see Confluence Hosted Resources.
This page does not apply if you are using Confluence Hosted. Read more about the feature limitations in
Confluence Hosted.
Basics
Key Advantages
Example Sites From Customers
Independent Reviews
Live Webinar Demonstration
Confluence Presentation Material
Case Studies
Customisation
Plugins
Document Management
Knowledge Base
Solutions Tour
Feel free to use or adapt the presentation material below when demonstrating Confluence to others:
Related Content
Confluence provides the following keyboard shortcuts. Not all are compatible with Internet Explorer:
Introduction
Many organizations have an LDAP directory acting as a centralized database of system users. Confluence
is able to authenticate users against their LDAP password.
This kind of LDAP integration is limited to checking passwords against the LDAP repository. For advanced
LDAP group management, you can use the new LDAP integration in Confluence 2.1 and later.
Before starting this guide, please ensure you have gone through the normal Confluence installation
process, including setting up the administrative user. Once this is done, you can apply the changes
below to enable LDAP integration.
If you're starting with a brand new Confluence installation, a summary of process looks like this:
1. Log in as the Confluence administrator, and for each LDAP user who should be able to log in to
Confluence:
• Add a new user in Confluence with the same username as in LDAP. The user's password in
Confluence can be set to anything, because the password will be checked against LDAP.
• Configure groups for the user as appropriate.
2. Edit the OSUser configuration file to add LDAP authentication.
3. Restart Confluence.
4. You can now log out, and log back in as any user, using the LDAP password.
If you have an existing users and groups in Confluence, all you need to do it edit the OSUser
configuration file and restart Confluence.
Instructions
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateAccessProvider</property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateProfileProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceLDAPCredentialsProvider">
<property name="java.naming.factory.initial">com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory</property>
<property name="java.naming.provider.url">ldap://localhost:389</property>
<property name="searchBase">dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="uidSearchName">cn</property>
<!--
<property name="java.naming.security.principal">cn=Manager,dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="java.naming.security.credentials">secret</property>
<property name="exclusive-access">true</property>
-->
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingCredentialsProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateCredentialsProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingAccessProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateAccessProvider</property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
<provider class="bucket.user.providers.CachingProfileProvider">
<property
name="chain.classname">com.opensymphony.user.provider.hibernate.HibernateProfileProvider</
property>
<property
name="chain.configuration.provider.class">bucket.user.BucketHibernateConfigProvider</property>
</provider>
You will need to update the following properties to suit your LDAP server:
If your LDAP server is not configured to allow anonymous lookups, you need to:
How it works
It is useful to have a general idea of how this setup works. This section outlines some consequences of
the current implementation, and provides some help for people experiencing LDAP connection problems.
The main point to realise is that user profiles are still managed in Confluence (the CachingProfileProvider
in osuser.xml). Only the password lookup is done against LDAP, and only if the Confluence username
coincides with a LDAP username.
Technically, this behaviour is due to Credentials (password) checking being a separate operation to user-
profile lookups. The profile can be loaded from the Confluence database, but the password looked up
from LDAP. Furthermore, multiple credentials providers can be specified (here, LDAP and OSUser), and if
one fails, the other will be used. This allows non-LDAP users to log in with their Confluence password.
Another effect of this implementation is that LDAP users do not automatically have access to Confluence.
A Confluence account must be created for each user wishing to use Confluence.
This is because each Confluence user has a set of groups (for example, 'confluence-users') stored in their
profile. Without an associated group, that user can do nothing; not even browse Confluence (they lack
the 'use' permission).
Thus, for an LDAP user to be able to use Confluence, a Confluence admin must create an account for
them, and assign them to a group (typically 'confluence-user'). The password in this Confluence account
will be ignored, as the LDAP password will override it.
Administration Topics
How to...
Confluence Security
DON'T PANIC!
Other
• Release Notes
• Development Releases
• Confluence Security Advisory 2005-02-09
• Confluence Presentation
• Confluence SOAP Provider Migration
Old documentation
This page is kept only for archiving purposes. Please see the current Administrators Guide.
This can begin to occur when your Confluence site has grown to a certain size that the database
connections times out, during the backup operation:
Stacktrace:
java.io.EOFException
STACKTRACE:
java.io.EOFException
at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.readFully(MysqlIO.java:1394)
This page represents a collection of tips accrued from answering support questions and developing with
various configurations.
If you need further configuration help or wish to contribute your own configuration tip please contact
confluence-support .
Application Servers
Databases
Web servers
Miscellaneous problems.
Version Warning
This document concerns upgrading Macro libraries written for Confluence 1.1 or 1.2 to a macro
plugin compatible with Confluence 1.3 or later. If you are not upgrading a Macro Library, you don't
need these instructions.
From Confluence 1.3 and onwards Macros become 'Plugins.' When upgrading, the only conversion which
must take place is XML based.
The example below uses the tasklist macro, which is bundled in Confluence 1.3 and used frequently in
earlier versions.
From Confluence 1.3 and onwards the XML descriptor is called atlassian-plugin.xml used in Confluence
1.3
In Confluence 1.2 and earlier the XML descriptor is called macro-library.xml and looks like:
<macro-libraries>
<macro-library name="Task List Macros" key="confluence.extra.tasklist"
description="An example macro library which generates task lists.">
<macro name="tasklist" class="com.atlassian.confluence.extra.tasklist.TaskListMacro"
description="Creates a very simple task list, with user checkable tasks."/>
</macro-library>
</macro-libraries>
Old documentation
This page is kept only for archiving purposes. Please see the current documentation at Customising
Look and Feel Overview.
Old documentation
This page is kept for only for archiving purposes. Please see Working With Decorator Macros.
Outdated page
This is the old documentation home page for Confluence. For current information, please visit the
new Confluence Documentation Home.
We won't delete this page because some external locations still link to it, such as Confluence
installation 'README' files.
This is the old list of frequently asked questions, left here temporarily. Please refer to the latest FAQ
for up-to-date information.
The best way you can help make this FAQ more useful is by asking questions: either in any of the places
above, or by leaving your questions in the comments below.
General Troubleshooting
° How does Confluence differ from a wiki? ° I am using MySQL, and after a while
° Can I use CamelCaseLinks like they do on Confluence stops working with database
WardsWiki? errors.
° How do I display an attached image in a ° When Confluence tries to send mail, I get
page? a "javax.mail.NoSuchProviderException:
° How do I set Confluence to redirect users smtp" error.
to a space homepage immediately after ° I am using MS SQL Server and I get a
login? "ResultSet can not re-read row data for
° How do I migrate Confluence from one column 2" error.
database to another? ° I am trying to use thumbnails, and I get
° How do I change the port used by the message: "This Confluence installation
Confluence Standalone? can not generate thumbnails: no image
° Where does Confluence store all its data? support in Java runtime"
° I can not find the "Rich Text" editor. Is the ° I am using Fedora Linux, and PDF exports
editor part of Confluence 1.4.3? fail with an UnsatisfiedLinkError
° I am getting Out of Memory errors, how
Users and Permissions can I allocate more memory to tomcat?
° Search is not finding my data AND the
° How do I configure Confluence for public/ indexing process does not appear to be
anonymous access? completing
° Can I restrict access to individual pages ° I am trying to install Confluence but the
within a space? demo-site.zip is missing?
° How do I prevent just anyone from being ° I am trying to compile a plugin, but get an
able to sign up for new accounts? error about the "target release"
° How do I share users and groups between ° I am getting "404" errors in the Space
Confluence and JIRA? tree view
° I have lost my administrator password, ° I am getting an error message about
what do I do? NoClassDefFoundError when using the
° Does the license check include deactivated Chart macro
users? ° Confluence says "the license you entered
was not valid" when I try and register
° I am getting JavaScript errors when using
Confluence
° The {rss}, {jiraissues} or {html-include}
macros fail when retrieving data from SSL
(https) servers
° Troubleshooting failed XML site backups
General
Essentially, Confluence is a wiki. Our aim was to build an application that was built to the requirements of
an enterprise knowledge management system, without losing the essential, powerful simplicity of the wiki
in the process.
On top of that, we added professional features, such as the partitioning of content into separately
managed spaces, user- and group-based access control, automated refactoring, PDF exporting,
searchable attachments, a comprehensive remote API, easy installation and a professional and easy-to-
use presentation; all wrapped up in Atlassian's "Legendary Service".
Yes. However, CamelCaseLinks are turned off by default. The site administrator can enable them from the
Administration Console.
Simple. Attach the image to the page. You can then include the image in the page by putting just the
attachment filename in your image tag, like so: !attachmentFilename.jpg! For example, the following
code produces the subsequent image:
\!fish.gif\!
Can I set Confluence to redirect users to a space homepage immediately after login?
Yes. This is configured by a site administrator from the Administration Console. Please vist the doc page
on how to do this.
RELATED TOPICS:
Confluence Administration Guides
Customising Space Homepage
First perform an XML backup of your Confluence site. You can do this from the Administration > Backup
and Restore page.
Once you've made the backup file, you can set up a new Confluence instance from scratch against your
new database and restore the backup that you just created. Detailed instructions can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS:
Configuration Guide
Confluence Administration Guides
Attachments, extensions and configuration files are stored in the Confluence Home Directorythat was
configured when Confluence was first installed. All remaining data resides in the configured database. For
more detailed answer to this question, see Confluence System Files and Data Storage.
The Rich Text Editor (aka WYSIWYG editor) is available in Confluence 2.O and upwards. A site
administrator will need to enable Rich text editing from the Administration Console before you can use
this option.
If you wish to upgrade your Confluence installation, instructions can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS:
Rich Text Editor Overview
Enabling Rich Text Editing
There are two different permissions that need to be set to allow anonymous access to a Confluence site.
First, the 'Anonymous' user needs the global "Use Confluence" permission, secondly you need to give
'Anonymous' permissions in each space you want to make public. Full instructions can be found here.
RELATED TOPICS
Security Overview
Users and Groups
Yes, Confluence has a fine grained security structure that allows you to restrict access at the site, space
and page levels. More information can be found in the Confluence User Guide.
RELATED TOPICS:
Page Level Permissioning
Space Permissions Overview
How do I prevent just anyone from being able to sign up for new accounts?
Public signup can be enabled or disabled from the 'General Configuration' section of the Administration
Console.
You will have to change the pasword manually in the database. A detailed description of the process can
be found under Restoring Passwords To Recover Admin User Rights.
No. The license check only includes users who have 'use Confluence' permission.
As of Confluence 2.1.x, you can no longer deactivate users, but users who cannot use Confluence are still
not counted in the license check.
RELATED TOPICS:
Removing a User
Viewing and Editing License Details
I am using MySQL, and after a while Confluence stops working with database errors.
MySQL's JDBC drivers have an annoying default behaviour where if a connection is idle for a certain
amount of time (by default, eight hours), it is closed. Since Confluence uses a connection pool, this
means that pooled connections die if they are not used within a certain time period.
The solution is to append ?autoReconnect=true to the end of your database's JDBC URL.
• If you are using JNDI data-sources, you will do this in your application server's configuration files.
• If you have configured Confluence to access the database directly, you will need to manually edit
the hibernate.connection.url property in the confluence.cfg.xml file in your confluence.home
directory. After you have changed the URL in this file, restart Confluence.
Note
In Confluence versions 1.0RC5 and before, there was a bug that manifested when you used Confluence
to connect directly to a MySQL database instead of going through a datasource configured in the
application-server under which Confluence runs. Unfortunately the symptoms of the bug were identical to
the much more common problem above, so it took us a little longer to find the problem than we should
have.
So long as you specify autoReconnect=true, Confluence 1.0RC6 and later should remain connected to
your MySQL database indefinitely.
The technical explanation is that you have two different versions of Sun's Javamail libraries in your
application classpath. When Confluence tries to send an email, Java gets confused as to which version of
the library it should be using, and falls over. If (and only if) you are encountering this error, try removing
the Javamail-1.3.jar and activation-1.0.1.jar files from the confluence/WEB-INF/lib directory of
your Confluence installation, and restarting the server. The problem should go away.
I am using MS SQL Server and I get a "ResultSet can not re-read row data for column 2" error.
I am trying to use thumbnails, and I get the message: "This Confluence installation can not generate
thumbnails: no image support in Java runtime"
On some Java installations (i.e. Unix without X11), you need to pass an additional parameter to Java
when you are starting up to tell it how to use its image-manipulation libraries.
To get thumbnail support working in this configuration, you need to start java with the argument '-
Djava.awt.headless=true'. If you are using tomcat (or the Confluence standalone edition), try setting the
environment variable JAVA_OPTS before starting the server. Assuming you're using the bourne or bash
shell:
export JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.awt.headless=true
On Fedora Linux, you will also need to install the xorg-x11-deprecated-libs package. (See: https://
bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=130239)
For other application servers, techniques may vary. If you need help with a particular server, mail us at
confluence-support@atlassian.com
I am getting Out of Memory errors, how can I allocate more memory to tomcat?
Since the default memory setting usually is around 64 or 128MB, you might have to adjust the settings
to run a bigger Confluence instance with sufficent memory. In order to allocate more memory to tomcat,
you will have to change the following settings:
On Linux
Edit the file $TOMCAT_HOME/bin/startup.sh and insert the following line, subsituting for the desired
value, eg. Bash Shell:
export CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms(min heap)m -Xmx(max heap)m;
On Windows
Edit the file $TOMCAT_HOME\bin\startup.bat and insert or alter the following line, subsituting for the
desired values:
set CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms(min heap)m -Xmx(max heap)m
For example if you want to allocate a minimum heap size of 256MB and a max heap size of 512MB you
will have to write the following on Windows:
set CATALINA_OPTS=-Xms256m -Xmx512m
If you are running tomcat 5.5 via tomcat.exe, you can update the heap size by running tomcatw.exe and
setting the required values via the Java tab.
On OS X
If you are using the 'serveradmin start appserver' to start and stop tomcat, then you will need to update /
usr/share/servermgrd/bundles/servermgr_appserver.bundle/Contents/Resources/run.sh
Search is not finding my data AND the indexing process does not appear to be completing. Whats
happening?
If you are not seeing pages returned by the search that you expect to be returned, it's most likely that
the indexing is not running correctly (either not running or failing). You can check the status of the index
processing via the "Administration Console | Administration | Content Indexing" link.
Why could indexing be failing? The indexing process is multi-threaded and therefore has a tendency to
consume a lot of resources when running an initial index or reindexing the entire site. So, what can do
wrong?
• Some systems do not like the multi-threaded index process. You can set the index process to us
only a single thread by setting bucket.indexing.threads.fixed=1
• The index process may also block if there are insufficient available database connections. Increasing
the number of connections from 15 to 30 will help in this situation.
For more detailed information, see the Content Index Administration page.
There are some cases where the unzip utility used to unzip the Confluence download will recursively
unzip all contained zip files. The demo-site.zip should be located in the WEB-INF\classes\com\atlassian
\confluence\setup directory. If it has been extracted, you will see an entities.xml file in this directory
instead.
I am trying to compile a plugin, but get an error about the "target release"
When compiling plugins and using version 1.5 of the JDK, the following error may appear:
[javac] javac: target release 1.3 conflicts with default source release 1.5
If you are browsing a space and looking at the "tree view", 404 errors may appear (or it will display
"Loading...") if the base url of your Confluence instance is not set.
You can fix this by going to Administration -> General Configuration, and making sure that the "Base
URL" setting is set to the correct address/domain name and path.
I am getting an error message about NoClassDefFoundError when using the Chart macro
The following error may appear when viewing certain pages where the Chart Macro is used:
This is indicative of an out-of-date version of the Chart macro. Make sure you have the latest version and
have removed any old versions or dependencies. If you are using Confluence 1.4, it may be a symptom of
not having the jfreechart and jcommon JARs in your installation, which are required.
Confluence says "the license you entered was not valid" when I try and register
If this happens, please check your logs. The following message may appear:
If you see this, you are most likely using GCJ/Kaffe, which sometimes has problems running Confluence.
Please try using the Sun JDK.
If your web browser is complaining about JavaScript errors or functions not being defined, then it is
possible that you are not retrieving the latest versions of pages from your Confluence instance.
To fix this, you need to clear your browser cache. Follow the instructions for your particular browser:
• Internet Explorer
• Firefox - Open the Preferences -> Privacy -> Click on the "Clear Cache" button
• Safari - Go to the Safari menu -> Clear Cache
This is the directory into which the downloaded Confluence application has been unpacked. Confluence
does not modify or store any data in this directory, but the following files are important to know about if
you are backing up or upgrading your Confluence instance:
java.io.tmpdir
The standard "temp" directory as configured in the Java runtime. Typically this is /tmp on Unix systems,
or C:\Temp on Windows. Some Confluence components will write temporary files or lockfiles to this
directory, but very little disk space will be used. To change the location of this directory, you should start
the Java Virtual Machine in which confluence is running with the argument -Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/
your/own/temp/directory.
The location of this directory is configured by the Confluence administrator during installation (see
confluence-init.properties above). Confluence writes its configuration files, uploaded plugin and
attachments into this directory, as well as many temporary files and runtime data. Administrators should
expect the Confluence Home Directory to grow quite large in a busy site.
The Confluence Home Directory has the following files and subdirectories:
The Database
All other data - page contents, links, archived mail and so on is kept in the database. If you have
configured Confluence to use the embedded HSQL database, the database will store its files under
database/ in the Confluence Home Directory. Otherwise, the database management system you are
connecting to is responsible for where and how your remaining data is being stored.
Tip
All of Confluence's persistent data is stored either in the Confluence Home Directory, or the
database. If you have backup copies of both of these, taken at the same time, you will be able to
restore Confluence from them (see Restore system from backup).
This page describes an unfinished feature of Confluence, for technical users who wish to play with it.
The features and modifications described in this page are not officially supported.
The GalleryMacro that is used to draw image galleries in a Confluence page has an undocumented
"theme" parameter that allows you to specify a different Velocity template from which to draw the gallery.
This allows enterprising Confluence administrators to come up with their own photo-album themes.
really hacky.
Instructions:
However, you can change this with the undocumented "theme" parameter in the gallery macro.
{gallery:theme=fish} will attempt to draw the gallery with /templates/macros/gallery-fish.vm from
anywhere in the application's CLASSPATH. So all you need to do is write the velocity file, dump it in the
right directory and restart the server.
If the gallery macro turns out to be something people really use, we'll probably make gallery themes a
supported feature with a user interface, a way to drop in theme packs, and so on. For now it's a back-
door hack.
NOTE: The last row of the thumbnail gallery may contain empty cells. In this case, because Velocity is
really broken with regards to its handling of nulls, the final list in $thumbnails.rows may be padded to its
full width with the string "BLANK". Be sure to check for this.
The ThumbnailInfo objects themselves that you get out of $thumbnails (Defined in ThumbnailInfo.java if
you've got the source and want a look):
Use this document if you are unable to login as administrator, to manually replace administrator
passwords or give users administration rights.
From Confluence 2.7 onwards the user management is handled by AtlassianUser. Hence in the database,
Confluence will refer to 'USERS' table to store and refer to its users. When you imported your backup on
upgrade, what should happen is the users in the 'OS_USER' table should get copied into 'USERS' table.
If you are still using OSUser please refer to our older document.
To find out which usernames have admin privileges, connect to your database using a database admin
tool such as DBVisualiser. Please download a database admin tool now if you do not have one installed
already. Once installed, connect to your database and retrieve the list of administrator usernames with:
Confluence does not store passwords in plain text in the database, but uses hashes computed from the
original password. You instead cut and a paste a hash, rather than the plain password, over the existing
password. Below is the hash for the password admin
x61Ey612Kl2gpFL56FT9weDnpSo4AV8j8+qx2AuTHdRyY036xxzTTrw10Wq3+4qQyB+XURPWx1ONxp3Y3pB37A==
1. Shutdown Confluence
2. Connect to your database.
3. The SQL to run is:
4. Start Confluence
5. Login with your modified username and use password admin
The {rss}, {jiraissues} or {html-include} macros fail when retrieving data from SSL
(https) servers
Confluence is deployed on Linux, and pages containing these macros fail to load, or load very slowly
If Confluence is deployed on Linux, and you experience time-outs or slow page loads when accessing
pages that cuase SSL-protected resources to be loaded, it could be because Linux is not generating
secure random numbers fast enough, and Java is blocking waiting for more to be generated. If this is the
problem, apply the following fix:
More information is available here: CONF-2848. (You could also install dedicated cryptographic hardware
into your server that guarantees fast secure random number generation, but that might be overkill )
Confluence does not accept the authority of the server's signing certificate
If Confluence is displaying or logging errors related to not being able to verify the certificate of an SSL/
https server, then it may be that the SSL server certificates are not signed by an authority recognised by
Confluence's Java environment. In this event you will need to add the signing authority of the server's
SSL certificate to Java's store of trusted signers. You can find further instructions here:
Confluence 2.7 and later is supported in and developed against the following browsers:
Rich text editing is not available in Safari or Opera due to Confluence's use of the TinyMCE 2.0 rich text
editor component. See CONF-6428 for more information.
Confluence tries to be as standard-compliant as possible, but we only test against released versions of
the above browsers. Many other browsers will work fine due to Confluence's general adherence to web
standards.
Reporting issues
If you come across an issue in a supported browser, please raise a bug in Confluence's public issue
tracker.
If you come across an issue in an unsupported browser, please raise an improvement request in the
same place. If Confluence's compliance with standards can be improved to also fix this issue, we'll leave
the issue open for consideration. Unfortunately, we will not be able to fix bugs in unsupported browsers
where our markup is valid according to the relevant standard and the bug is due to a problem with the
browser itself.
This page has moved. Please see Working with Macros for a current list of Confluence macros.
Example 1:
{children:all=true}
gives:
Example 2:
A depth of 1 will only display the first generation descendents of the current page. That is it will only
display the direct children of the current page.
{children:depth=1}
gives:
Example 3:
A style of "h3" will display the page's direct children as level 3 headings, with their children as lists below
the headings. Very useful for quickly generating a contents page
{children:all=true|style=h3}
gives
The IM presence macros allow you to show a graphic indication when someone is online.
1. Yahoo!
2. AIM
3. ICQ
Usage: {yahoo:yahooID}
Description: Show a graphic indication of when someone is online
Example:
{yahoo:myYahooId}
Usage: {aim:screenname}
Description: Show a graphic indication of when someone is online
Example:
{aim:myScreenName}
Usage: {icq:icqnumber}
Description: Show a graphic indication of when someone is online
Example:
{icq:12345678}
user. eg: or
Summary
Inserts the contents of the specified page into the current one.
Usage
{include:Some page}
{include:spaceKey=KEY|pageTitle=Another page}
Parameters
Notes
Users without permission to view the included page will see an error that the page could not be found.
A page cannot include itself or a page that includes itself. An error message will be displayed if this
occurs.
As a result of RSS feed improvements, the (outdated) JIRA Issues Macro differs between JIRA 3.6 and
3.7.
This is not a concern for users running the latest versions of Confluence and JIRA. However, users using
Confluence versions older than 2.2.10 to access JIRA 3.7 must upgrade Confluence or patch the JIRA
Issues macro to handle the 3.7 format.
Usage: jiraportlet:url=
Description: Display a JIRA dashboard portlet in Confluence
Input: url=
http://jira.atlassian.com/secure/RunPortlet.jspa?
portletKey=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.portlets:projectst
description=Stats:%20Confluence
%20(Versions)&projectid=10470&
statistictype=fixfor&template=/portlets/
dashboard/projectstats.jsp
Example
12
2.8
14
2.8.1
12
2.9
Unscheduled 3610
99%
If your JIRA instance requires you to log in, you must add
&os_username=username&os_password=password to the end of the URL (substituting a valid JIRA
username and password) so that Confluence can log in to retrieve the portlet. This is a temporary
measure until we get Confluence and JIRA cross-authentication working more effectively.
1. Add the portlet you wish to include in Confluence to your JIRA dashboard (Once you have copied the
portlet's URL into Confluence, you will be able to remove from your JIRA dashboard)
2. Configure your dashboard
(Note, the command for copying a link to the clipboard may differ in your browser)
Display a summary of JUnit test results from a directory accessible from the Confluence server.
Usage:
{junitreport:directory=[file:///directory/]}
OR
{junitreport:url=http://*host*/*path*\}
Layout Macros
Layout macros allow you to define a {section} of the page that is divided into multiple {column}'s.
You must always define {column}s inside a {section}, or the macro will not work.
• border - use {section:border=true} to draw the columns with borders around them. The default is
no border.
• width - use the width parameter to determine how wide each column should be. By default, the
columns are automatically resized to fit their contents.
Example:
{section}
{column:width=30%}
This is some _Wiki Markup_
{column}
{column:width=70%}
This is some more wiki *markup*
{column}
{section}
Produces:
Usage:
Example:
{noformat}
Hello World!
Hello Mike!
{noformat}
gives:
Hello World!
Hello Mike!
Search Confluence, and include the results in the page. The search macro behaves identically to
Confluence's built-in site search.
Usage:
{search:my_query}
OR
{search:my_query|maxLimit=maxLimit}
Available types:
Supplying no type will result in the search returning results from all content except mail.
Example:
{search:confluence|maxLimit=5}
gives:
Spacegraph Macro
This macro requires that GraphViz is installed. You should perform the default installation for your
operating system. See the Enable The Flowchart Macro for Graphviz configuration information.
This macro is shipped with Confluence as source, to use it you need to build the 'graphviz' plugin. To do
this, you need to install ant and run the command:
spaces-list Macro
Usage: {spaces-list:width=<width_variable>}
Description: Displays a list of all spaces visible to the user,
with linked icons leading to various space content
functionality, within a table. The width parameter
expresses the specifies the table on the page.
Example:
{spaces-list:width=40%}
Input: width
Output: a list of spaces
Bundled with Confluence?: yes
Since: 1.4 DR2
Userlister Macro
The Userlister macro has been updated for the Confluence 1.4 release to provide a greater range of
flexibility. For convenience, the 1.3 Userlister usage documentation is provided below.
Usage: {userlister:groups=group,...|online=true/false}
Description: Display a list of Confluence users, from an optional
set of groups
Example:
{userlister:groups=confluence-users|online=true}
Examples:
Usage: {userlister:group-name}
Description: Display a list of Confluence users, from an optional
group
Example:
{userlister:confluence-users}
welcome-message Macro
Usage: {welcome-message}
Description: Include the Confluence site welcome message. The
site welcome message may be configured in the
Adminstation -> General Configuration section.
Example:
{welcome-message}
Input:
Output: The site welcome message
Bundled with Confluence?: Yes
Since: 1.4 DR2
This version of the document applies to Confluence 1.0 and earlier. Users of Confluence 1.0.1 and later
should refer to this document instead.
This article will help you set up Confluence to re-use your existing JIRA user base. The examples assume
you are running Confluence under Tomcat 4.1.x and your JIRA database is running under Postgres,
but the same concepts (but not the verbatim examples) can be applied to other application-servers or
databases.
Please note that this feature will not work if you are using JIRA with the embedded HSQL database. That
is, this will not work if you are running JIRA standalone against the default database out of the box.
However, it does not matter which database you are using for Confluence.
Note: the admin user account will no longer be valid once you switch over to using your JIRA user base.
Therefore you should avoid adding any content with this account.
If you have already set up JIRA to run against Tomcat, then all you have to do is cut and paste the
datasource information you entered for JIRA into Confluence's <context>.
• Locate your confluence context statement which should look similar to the following:
and insert the following block of code after the <Logger className . . . timestamp="true'/>
statement.
You will need to change the sample values given above to suit your installation.
• Find this file in the /confluence/WEB-INF/classes folder and open in a text editor
• Comment out the following block of code:
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.ConfluenceCredentialsProvider">
<property name="configuration.provider.class">
com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceHibernateConfigProvider
</property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.ConfluenceAccessProvider">
<property name="configuration.provider.class">
com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceHibernateConfigProvider
</property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.ConfluenceProfileProvider">
<property name="configuration.provider.class">
com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceHibernateConfigProvider
</property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcCredentialsProvider">
<property name="datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcAccessProvider">
<property name="datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
</provider>
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.providers.jira.JiraJdbcProfileProvider">
<property name="datasource">java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS</property>
<property name="configuration.provider.class">
com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceHibernateConfigProvider
</property>
</provider>
• Replace the datasource property with the datasource you set up in step 2.
To give your existing JIRA users access to Confluence, you have two options.
1. Manually edit the groups of these users inside JIRA and give them membership to one or both of
these confluence groups OR
2. Restart Confluence. Log in using your JIRA account, and go to Administration and then Global
Permissions. Now add USE permission to your desired JIRA groups.
Finally, since user management is now conducted in JIRA and outside of Confluence, you will need to
switch external user management on.
Activating external user management will remove user and group management options from Confluence.
Your users will also no longer be able to edit their full name or email address inside Confluence (if they
want to, they would have to do so in JIRA). To do this:
Deprecation Notice
This document has been deprecated as of 1st March 2006. Please use this document instead.
This document will run you through how you can plug Confluence up with the new Atlassian-User-LDAP-
Integration.
Unable to render {include} Couldn't find a page to include called: Customising atlassianUserContext.xml
Now that you have plugged Confluence into LDAP, you need to set up an admin account (Confluence
cannot access the original admin account you created, because you have switched over to using LDAP as
your main user repository).
1. Either create a new LDAP user account called 'admin' or elect your own LDAP user account to be the
administrator account.
2. Now create two LDAP groups: confluence-administrators and confluence-users.
3. Grant the admin account membership to these groups.
You should now be able to log into Confluence with this account and have full administrative rights.
To enable a user in your LDAP system to access Confluence, you need to do one of the following:
• Restore system from backup — This document outlines setting up a Confluence instance from a
Confluence backup file.
• Troubleshooting failed XML backups
Wiki Importer
We have developed a small java application that will help you extract the content from other wiki
products and arrange it in a Confluence-friendly, importable format. Currently, it supports TWiki and
JSPWiki but the framework was developed so that it is possible to add support for other formats.
By default, Confluence runs its daily backup at 2AM. You may wish to change this to another time if you
have user activity at 2AM.
Confluence uses Quartz for scheduling periodic jobs. The Quartz configuration is in the file confluence/
WEB-INF/classes/schedulingSubsystemContext.xml.
To change the time that the backup job runs, find the section of the file:
The string '0 0 2 * * ?' sets up a Cron Trigger which states that the job will run at the zeroth second
of the zeroth minute of the 2nd hour, every day of every month, every day of the week.
To change the time to, say, twenty past ten PM, change the string to '0 10 22 * * ?'.
If you wanted to back up only weekly, you could use '0 0 0 ? * SUN' to backup at midnight every
Sunday.
For complete details on the format of the cron string, please see http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/
api/org/quartz/CronTrigger.html.
Please use the Universal Wiki Converter to import your JSPWiki content.
Please use the Universal Wiki Converter to import your JSPWiki content.
This document outlines setting up a Confluence instance from a Confluence backup file.
On a daily basis, Confluence back ups your data and configuration information into a zipped XML file. You
can find these daily backups in the backups folder inside your Confluence home directory.
• empty instance
• an instance with a demonstration space
• restore from backup
Select the last option. Under where it says Upload a zipped backup to Confluence, browse for the
relevant daily backup file. If you have:
You can copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence home folder and then
refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear in the box underneath the heading Restore
a backup from the filesystem. Select and submit to commence the restore process.
You can copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence home folder and then
refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear in the box underneath the heading Restore
a backup from the filesystem. Select and submit to commence the restore process.
Restoring from database backups and a backup of your confluence home directory
If your daily backup zips cannot be restored for whatever reason, but you have both a database backup
and backups of your confluence home diretory, then it is still possible to restore from these.
If you are running against the embedded database, the database is located inside the database
folder of your confluence home directory. Pointing the confluence-init.properties file in a new
Confluence install to one of your backup home directories should get you up and running.
If you're using an external database, you need to first build up a working database from one of
your database backups (if you haven't got one running already). If this database happens to have a
different name, or is on a different server, you can modify the jdbc url in the confluence.cfg.xml file
inside the confluence home directory (Beside the hibernate.connection.url property). Now set the
confluence.home property in the confluence-init.properties file in your Confluence webapp to this
home directory and you should be up and running.
Out Of Date
If creating an XML backup of Confluence fails with a stack trace error similar to this, your database has
become slightly corrupted. This is likely to have occurred while using the embedded database. If you
are using the embedded database, be aware that it is bundled for evaluation purposes and does not
offer full transactional integrity in the event of sudden power loss, which is why an external database is
recommended for production use.
To correct the corruption, increase the level of logging to identify the cause and manually correct any
invalid entries in the database. To do this:
1. Shutdown Confluence.
2. Open the confluence/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties and add this to the bottom and save:
log4j.logger.com.atlassian.confluence.importexport.impl.XMLDatabinder=DEBUG, confluencelog
log4j.additivity.com.atlassian.confluence.importexport.impl.XMLDatabinder=false
This excerpt from a log file shows that there was an error trying to confer the ContentPermission
object with id 5 into XML. The database object is a row in the CONTENTLOCK table with id = 5 and
reset CONTENT column property so that it no longer points to the id 2535 (the id of an entry that
no longer exists). If you are wondering which table a certain object is stored in, here's a rough
This documentation concerns Confluence version 1.3. For current documentation, see Macro Plugins
Macros are Confluence code that can be invoked from inside a page by putting the name of the macro
in curly brackets. Users of Confluence will be familiar with macros like {color} or {children} or {rss}.
Thanks to the plugin system, it is easy to write and install new macros into a Confluence server.
If you want to create a macro that just inserts some boiler-plate text or performs simple formatting,
you may only need a User Macro. User macros can be written entirely from within the Confluence
web interface, and require no special installation or programming knowledge.
• For more information about plugins in general, read Confluence Plugin Guide.
• To learn how to install and configure plugins (including macros), read Installing and Configuring
Plugins manually.
• For an introduction to writing your own plugins, read Writing Confluence Plugins
Each macro is a plugin module of type "macro", packaged with whatever Java classes and other resources
(i.e. Velocity templates) that the macro requires in order to run. Generally, similar macros are packaged
together into a single plugin, for ease of management. Here is an example atlassian-plugin.xml file
The name of the macro defines how it will be referenced from the page. So if you define your macro as
having name="tasklist", the macro will be called from the page as {tasklist}.
The class attribute of the macro defines what Java class will be used to process that macro.
This is the class you need to write in order for the macro to function. Your class should extend
com.atlassian.renderer.macro.BaseMacro.
As an example, tasklist is one of the example macros, which builds a simple task list within a
Confluence page and allows users to complete and uncomplete the various tasks simply. It also serves as
a good example of how easy it is to build add functionality to Confluence.
Example
Here's a screenshot of the tasklist macro in action, showing a simple shopping list that's half completed:
This was generated by notation like the following, with tasks completed or uncompleted by clicking on the
relevant or :
{tasklist:Shopping List}
Buy apples
Buy bananas
Purchase shopping bag
Collect laundry
Deposit money
{tasklist}
As of 1.3, the tasklist macro is packaged with Confluence as a plugin, and should be available when you
install the application.
To build tasklist, go to the custommacros directory within the expanded distribution, and run:
and then restart your Confluence instance. Similarly you can uninstall the library like so:
Note: Confluence must first be shutdown before you can uninstall macros.
To check if this problem exists in your installation, first open up a console window to your database.
You can verify this problem exists if you notice multiple indexes referencing the same column name
like the following:
+---------+------------+---------------+--------------+-------------+
| Table | Non_unique | Key_name | Seq_in_index | Column_name |
+---------+------------+---------------+--------------+-------------+
| CONTENT | 0 | PRIMARY | 1 | CONTENTID |
| CONTENT | 1 | BLOGSPACEID | 1 | BLOGSPACEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | PAGEID | 1 | PAGEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | PARENTID | 1 | PARENTID |
| CONTENT | 1 | PREVVER | 1 | PREVVER |
| CONTENT | 1 | SPACEID | 1 | SPACEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | DESCSPACEID | 1 | DESCSPACEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | BLOGSPACEID_2 | 1 | BLOGSPACEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | PAGEID_2 | 1 | PAGEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | PARENTID_2 | 1 | PARENTID |
| CONTENT | 1 | PREVVER_2 | 1 | PREVVER |
| CONTENT | 1 | SPACEID_2 | 1 | SPACEID |
| CONTENT | 1 | DESCSPACEID_2 | 1 | DESCSPACEID |
+---------+------------+---------------+--------------+-------------+
> \d content;
You can verify this problem exists if you get lots of RI_ConstraintTriggers being displayed like
the following:
Example:
Triggers: RI_ConstraintTrigger_214459,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214460,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214465,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214466,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214468,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214469,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214482,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214483,
RI_ConstraintTrigger_214484,
If you observe this in your database, you can fix the problem by performing the following:
<property name="hibernate.dialect">net.sf.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
<property name="hibernate.dialect">bucket.dialect.MySQLDialect</property>
Old Documentation
This documentation refers to Confluence 1.3. Users of Confluence 1.4 or later should ignore this
documentation.
Once you have determined that Confluence's features are for you, then it's time to set up against
whichever database you plan to deploy against in production.
You Are Installing Confluence with Oracle for the First Time
A fresh installation of Confluence will work quite happily against an Oracle 8 or 9i database provided you
keep the following in mind:
• Regardless of what version of the Oracle database you are using, you must use the Oracle 10g JDBC
drivers.
• You must use the thin drivers.
• You must connect to Oracle through a datasource configured in your application server. Confluence
will not connect directly to an Oracle database.
• You must set the following connection parameter in your datasource configuration:
SetBigStringTryClob=true
Consult the documentation for your application server on how to configure a datasource, and
set datasource properties. If you have any problems, ask on the Confluence forum, or http://
support.atlassian.com
If you are using Tomcat (or the Confluence standalone, which is packaged with Tomcat) you will need to
add the following to your datasource definition in order for it to recognise the new connection parameter:
<parameter>
<name>connectionProperties</name>
<value>SetBigStringTryClob=true</value>
</parameter>
RSS is a file format used for syndication on the web. When a site publishes new content regularly, the site
can represent those changes in an RSS file. RSS isn't designed to be read in a regular web browser, but
specialised RSS newsreader programs can check RSS files every so often, and tell you what's new on a
site. For a technical description of the RSS format, you can read Mark Pilgrim's "What is RSS?" article on
XML.com.
There are two ways that Confluence uses RSS. Firstly, it can display RSS feeds from other sites, allowing
you to follow the news from those sites inside Confluence. Secondly, Confluence publishes RSS feeds of
recently updated content, allowing you to be notified of those changes through your own RSS reader.
If another site publishes an RSS feed, you can include its contents in a Confluence page by including the
(outdated) RSS Feed Macro in the page, giving it the URL of the feed you want to follow. Confluence will
check the feed for updates at most every hour.
Confluence also produces RSS that you can subscribe to (using an RSS Newsreader) in order to receive
notifications of new or updated content on the Confleunce site.
Authentication
To have your news aggregator log into Confluence, you can append ?
os_username=yourusername&os_password=yourpassword to the URL of the feed you are trying to
retrieve. Note, however, that this means someone with access to your aggregator configuration can read
your password.
RSS Newsreaders
The following are some popular RSS newsreader programs for various operating systems. You can find a
more comprehensive list on Google's open directory
Windows
• SharpReader
• NewsGator
• Syndirella
• FeedDemon
• NewzCrawler
Mac OS X
• NetNewsWire
• NewsFire
• Shrook
Multi-Platform
Before running the Confluence Setup Wizard described below, please follow the instructions on installing
Confluence.
When you access Confluence in your web browser for the first time, you will see the Confluence
Setup Wizard. This is a series of screens which will prompt you to supply some default values for your
Confluence site. It will also offer some more advanced options for setting up data connections and
restoring data from a previous installation.
On this page:
above.
° Obtain a trial, free or commercial licence.
2. Type or paste your license key into the 'License Key' field, shown on the screenshot above.
Option 1: Standard Installation — Set up Confluence with the embedded HSQLDB database and default
settings. This option will also install a 'Demonstration Space' with some example content to get you
working with Confluence as quickly and easily as possible. You may upgrade to another type of database
later on.
• Choose the standard installation if you are evaluating Confluence or if you are new to
Confluence.
• This option is not recommended for production instances of Confluence.
For production use, we strongly recommend that you connect to an external database rather than
using the embedded database. The standard installation is therefore not suitable for production
installations.
Option 2: Custom Installation — Customise your Confluence instance to use your own database and your
own data.
The above screen appears if you have chosen a custom installation of Confluence. You can choose to use
the embedded database supplied with your Confluence installation, or to connect to an external database.
Option 1: Embedded Database — If you select this option, Confluence will use an embedded HSQLDB
database. You should only select this option if you are evaluating Confluence, or for demonstration
purposes.
You can migrate to another database later on, if you wish.
Option 2: External Database — If you wish Confluence to use an external database, select your database
type from the database dropdown list and then click the 'External Database' button.
Read more information about supported databases.
For production deployments of Confluence, we recommend that you use an external database to
ensure your data is kept safe and consistent.
• Character encoding:
° We strongly recommend that character encoding is consistent across your database,
application server and web application, and that you use UTF-8 encoding.
• Database name: When creating a new external database, give it the name 'confluence'.
You can choose to configure your database via a standard JDBC connection or via a server-managed
datasource connection. Choose one of the two options below.
Option 1: Standard Database Connection — This uses a standard JDBC database connection. Connection
pooling is handled within Confluence.
Screenshot: Standard (JDBC) Connection
• Driver Class Name — The Java class name for the appropriate database driver. This will depend on
the JDBC driver, and will be found in the documentation for your database. You will also need to put
the appropriate database driver 'jar' file in the server's classpath. For the standalone version, this
means copying the jar file into the common/lib directory.
• Database URL — The JDBC URL for the database you will be connecting to. This will depend on the
JDBC driver, and will be found in the documentation for your database.
• User Name — A valid username which Confluence will use to access your database.
• Password — The password corresponding to the above username.
• The size of the connection pool Confluence should maintain. If in doubt, just go with the default
provided.
• What kind of database you're connecting to, so you can tell Confluence which dialect it needs to use.
Option 2: Datasource Connection — This asks the Java application server for a database connection. You
will need to have configured a datasource into your application server.
Screenshot: Datasource Connection
• Datasource Name — The JNDI name of the datasource, as configured in the application server.
Note: Some servers will have JNDI names like jdbc/datasourcename; others will be of the form
java:comp/env/jdbc/datasourcename. Consult your application-server documentation.
• What kind of database you're connecting to, so you can tell Confluence which dialect it needs to use.
• Example Site — This option will load Confluence's 'Demonstration Space'. Select this if you are using
Confluence for the first time, or if you want the Demonstration Space for your other Confluence
users. The Demonstration Space helps to familiarise you with Confluence and what it can do for you.
You can then continue using your Confluence deployment as normal — there's no need to reinstall
later.
• Empty Site — Select this option if you are already familiar with Confluence. You will need to create
at least one space before you can start adding content to the site.
• Restore from Backup — Select this option if you want to use Confluence data from a previous
installation.
Option 1: Upload a zipped backup to Confluence — This option will load the data from a zipped backup
file.
To create a backup file from your existing version of Confluence, go to the 'Backup & Restore' section
of your Administration Console.
1. Browse for the relevant daily backup file or a file you have created via a manual backup.
2. Check 'Build Index' to build the data index, used for the search.
3. Click the 'Upload and Restore' button.
Option 2: Restore a backup from the filesystem — This option is recommended if you have a very large
daily backup file (greater than 100MB), or a daily backup file that is already on the server and doesn't
require uploading.
1. Copy the backup file into the restore directory inside your confluence Home directory and then
refresh the page. You should now see your backup file appear on the 'Restore Data' screen (pictured
above), in the box beneath the heading 'Restore a backup from the filesystem'.
2. Check 'Build Index' to build the data index, used for the search.
3. Click the 'Restore' button.
When the restore process has finished, you are ready to log in to Confluence. The system
administrator account and all other information has been transferred from your previous Confluence
installation.
The system administrator has full administrative power over your Confluence instance. This person
will be able to add more users, create spaces, and set further Confluence options. Please refer to the
overview of global permissions for more information.
1. Enter the following information to set up your system administrator's user account:
• Username — The username under which the system administrator will log in to Confluence,
e.g. 'jsmith'.
• Password — The password which the system administrator will use to log in.
• Confirm — Enter the same password again.
• Name — The system administrator's full name, e.g. 'John Smith'.
• Email — The system administrator's email address, e.g. 'jsmith@example.com'.
2. Click 'Next'.
9. Setup is Complete
Screenshot: Setup Complete
Congratulations! You have installed and set up Confluence. Click the 'Start using Confluence now' link to
open the 'Demonstration Space' in your Confluence wiki. This space contains some sample content and
ideas, to help you get started quickly.
RELATED TOPICS
Shortcut links are defined by the Confluence administrator. They are a quick way to create links to
resources that are frequently referenced from Confluence. Administrators can maintain shortcuts from the
"Shortcut Links" link in the administrative console.
For the examples I give below to work, these shortcuts must be configured on your Confluence
server. If they aren't, ask your server administrator to add them.
Easy. You just specify in the link what should go on the end of the shortcut URL, followed by an at-sign
and the name of the shortcut. Shortcut names are case-insensitive. So, for example:
Shortcut links can have titles just like any other link:
Limitations
Currently, you can only have shortcuts append things to the end of URLs. We're planning on removing
this limitation in future versions of Confluence.
Confluence 2.1 carries a new User system - Atlassian User. It is compatible with most existing
osuser.xml configurations, but if you are running with the OSUser LDAP integration, you will need
to change one line of osuser.xml to get it to work with Confluence 2.1.
Please see the original instructions for setting up an osuser.xml which can integrate with LDAP.
You must ensure that the only CredentialsProvider in your osuser.xml is the
ConfluenceLDAPCredentialsProvider (see below).
<provider class="com.opensymphony.user.provider.ldap.LDAPCredentialsProvider">
to
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceLDAPCredentialsProvider">
<provider class="com.atlassian.confluence.user.ConfluenceLDAPCredentialsProvider">
<property name="java.naming.factory.initial">com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory</property>
<property name="java.naming.provider.url">ldap://localhost:389</property>
<property name="searchBase">dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="uidSearchName">cn</property>
<!--
<property name="java.naming.security.principal">cn=Manager,dc=atlassian,dc=com</property>
<property name="java.naming.security.credentials">secret</property>
<property name="exclusive-access">true</property>
-->
</provider>
About Templates
Templates are a Confluence feature that allow you to create pages from previously defined forms.
Templates are useful for giving your Confluence pages a 'house style', especially for types of pages that
are commonly created. For example, a software development project might have templates for use-cases,
or a systems administration space might make a template defining what information is being kept about
each server.
Templates are written in Confluence's regular wiki markup, using special markup to define form fields that
need to be filled in.
Using Templates
When you create a page, you may see a link asking you to select a template page:
If you do not see this link, then there are currently no templates defined - an administrator will have to
create one before you can use it.
Following this link will present you with a list of the templates that are available in the current space.
Once you have selected a template, you will be asked to fill it in: enter the appropriate values into the
form and press the "Insert Variables" button:
Once you've inserted the variables into the template, you'll have one last chance to edit the page as a
whole to clean up anything messy (or add more information) before saving it.
There are two kinds of templates. Global Templates are defined by the site administrators from the
global administration pages, and are available in every space. Space Templates are defined by space
administrators in the space administration screens, and are only available in the space in which they are
defined.
Either way, templates are just regular wiki pages with special markup to tell Confluence where to insert
form fields. There are three kinds of form fields supported: text input, text areas and drop-down menus.
Every input field must have a unique name, which is just a word that will .
Text input fields are special. If you have more than one text input field in the same template with
the same name, then Confluence will make sure that they all end up with the same value: this is
useful if you need the same information in more than one place in the page!
Important There must be no spaces between the @-signs in the markup. This means you can't have
items in your drop-down lists that contain spaces:
Good
@VAR|textarea(10x80)@
@VAR|list(red,blue,green,orange)@
Bad
@VAR|textarea(10 x 80)@
@VAR|list(red, blue, green, orange)@
@VAR|list(red,blue,light green,orange)@
Template Limitations
Templates can only be used to create a page. Once a page is created, the template is gone and all further
editing is performed as if the template had never been used.
In the future, templates will be expanded to do more interesting things - such as remaining part of the
page, having more complex (and even dynamic) fields, being able to search Confluence based on the
value of particular fields, and so on.
Customizable Site Titles are a new feature in the release of Confluence 1.4.
The site title within Confluence appears at the top of each of browser window (within the HTML META
TITLE element) and within the login and logout pages.
A common need for this is to represent that name of your organisation wherever you would normally see
'Confluence'.
Only Confluence administrators can edit the value of the site title.
Navigate to the Administration region and follow the 'General Configuration' Link.
Simply edit the field to represent the value you wish to use for the site title:
Before:
After:
Each time a page is edited, Confluence keeps the previous version. You can see all of these old versions,
and you can see the differences between two versions, which makes it easy to see what has changed.
Previous versions of a page are accessed from the page's Info Tab.
Clicking the 'View page history' link takes you to a view which shows all the previous versions of the
page. Each version is numbered. The oldest version is number 1.
• Replace the content of the page with that of an old version by clicking the restore link
.
• Compare two versions by selecting their check boxes and clicking the compare selected version
button.
• View an old version by clicking on the numbered link in the version column.
Comparing Versions
To compare two versions you select two versions as described above, or use one of the shortcuts on the
Info Tab to compare two recent consecutive versions.
• Information about the two versions: their authors, and creation times.
• The number of changes between the two versions, and a link to the first of them.
• The changes. Lines inserted are shown in green, and lines removed in red.
and next
changes.
This page is out of date and is left here for reference purposes only. Please read the Security
Overview and Global Permissions Overview for up-to-date information.
New users can be created by a site administrator through the "Manage Users" option in the
Administration pages, or they can sign themselves up for an account using the signup form. If you
do not want users signing up for their own accounts, you can disable the signup form in the "General
Configuration" section of the Administration pages: change "Allow Public Signup" to "OFF"
Users can be grouped together into groups for more convenient administration. You can create new
groups in the "Manage Groups" section of the Administration pages, and assign users to groups through
the "Manage Users" section. Once you have assigned a user to a group, anything the group is permitted
to do, the user is also permitted to do.
The "Anonymous" user isn't really a user, although it shows up on the permission management pages.
"Anonymous" represents not only all the users in the system, but also anyone who has not logged in at
all. (We call these people "Anonymous users", since they haven't identified themselves)
For more information about setting up anonymous access in Confluence, see Setting up Anonymous
Access.
confluence-administrators is the super-user group. Any user in this group automatically has
permission to do anything in the site, regardless of the setting of any other privileges. Users in the
confluence-administrators group are also listed as being availble to help on the "Contact Administrators"
page that is linked throughout the site.
confluence-users is the default group. All new users are added to this group, so whatever permissions
you assign to this group will be the default access for newly signed-up users.
Confluence will only allow you to delete a user entirely if the user is not responsible for any content within
the site. If a user has edited a page or blog post, or left a comment, Confluence will need to keep the
user around in the system to maintain its knowledge of who wrote what. You can, however, deactivate a
user so they can no longer log in to Confluence.
Deleting and deactivating users can be done in the "Manage Users" section of the Administration pages.
Permissions
What a user is allowed to do in Confluence is determined by the permissions they have assigned to them.
Managing the users of a Confluence installation consists of giving the right users the right permissions.
Confluence is a tool for communication and collaboration. You get the most value out of Confluence the
more people you have participating in its discussions and editing its pages. Because Confluence keeps
histories of all changes, it is very easy to see who has changed what, and reverse any edits that should
not have been made. In short, you should design the security of a Confluence installation in accordance
with the principle of Most Privilege. Give people the ability to do anything that you can't think of a good
reason to restrict them from doing.
There are three levels of permissions in Confluence: Global Permissions, Space Permissions and Page
Restrictions.
Global Permissions
Global Permissions are granted in the "Global Permissions" section of the Administration screens. In order
to assign these permissions, a user must already have the global "Administrate Confluence" permission.
Confluence will do its best to make sure you never end up in a situation where the site no longer has any
more administrators.
• Use Confluence: The most basic permission. Without this, a user is not able to access the site at
all, regardless of what other permissions they may have. In the case of a limited-user license, the
number of licensed users is calculated as the number of users who have this permission. (If the
"Anyone" user has this permission, then the number of licensed users will always be equal to the
number of registered users)
• Create Space: Users with this permission can create new spaces within a Confluence site. When a
space is created, the creator automatically has the "Administer Space" permission for that space.
• Administer Confluence: Users with this permission have access to the site administration pages,
can change the site configuration, perform backups and imports, and create and modify user
details. Note that this isn't quite the same as the super-user privilege of being in the confluence-
administrators group, but since any Administrator has the power to add themselves to that group,
the distinction is only a technical one.
Space Permissions
Every space has its own, independant set of permissions. Space Permissions are granted in the
"Permissions" section of each Space Information page. In order to assign these permissions, a user must
have the "Administrate Space" permission for that space. If you misconfigure a space so that nobody has
access to administer it any more, you will need to have someone in the confluence-administrators
group fix the permissions for you.
• Blog Posts:
° Create - user may post blogs in this space.
° Delete - user may remove blogs in this space.
• Comments:
° Create - user may make comments in this space.
° Delete - user may remove comments from this space.
• Attachments:
° Create - user may add attachments in this space.
° Delete - user may remove attachm\ents from this space.
• Space:
Page Restrictions
The Page Restrictions, introduced in Confluence 1.4, allow to restrict view and edit actions on pages. For
complete details, see Page Restrictions.
To understand how Space Permissions and Page Restrictions affect each other, please see Security
Overview.
Macros allow you to perform programmatic functions within a page, and can be used for generating more
complex content structures. Generally speaking, a macro is simply a command wrapped inside curly
braces {...}.
Macro libraries are collections of macros which may work together or provide common functionality. They
also allow groups of macros to be enabled or disabled together. (Added in Confluence 1.1).
Confluence comes bundled with a host of useful macros, but users can also create their own macros to do
specific things.
Between Confluence 1.2 and 1.3, macros were made a part of the Confluence plugin architecture,
with each macro being a plugin module. As such, the configuration files needed to configure a macro
for Confluence have changed. Follow this link for information on converting between 1.2 macro
libraries and 1.3 plugins
Created a new macro or looking for macros?
Share your macros and find new plugins in the Confluence extensions space.
More Information
• Guide to Confluence Macros - a list and usage examples of the macros that come bundled with
Confluence
• User Macros - how to create simple formatting macros inside Confluence in real time.
• Macro Plugins - how to extend Confluence with more complex macros written in Java
• Documenting Macros - You haven't finished writing your macro until you've documented it!
• User Contributed Macros - Macros written by other Confluence users
Old Information
The following pages describe how to write macros for Confluence 1.1 and 1.2. This information is not
relevant to users of Confluence 1.3.
• Macro Management - obsolete - enabling and disabling individual macros and entire libraries.
• Custom Java Macros - obsolete - creating more complicated custom macros using Java, including a
worked example.
Old Documentation
This documentation is for Confluence 1.1 and Confluence 1.2. If you are using Confluence 1.3
or later, macros are now written as Confluence Plugins, and you should read the Macro Plugins
documentation instead.
Java-based macros give you the most power to create your own Confluence macros that can produce
complex HTML, retrieve data from Confluence, manipulate pages and interact with other systems and
resources.
If you want to create more simple formatting macros in Confluence, you may only need a User macro.
A Confluence macro library is a JAR file containing classes and resources (ie Velocity templates) used by
the macros in the library, as well as a macro library descriptor file macro-library.xml. This descriptor
defines and documents the macro library, like the example below:
<macro-libraries>
<macro-library name="Task List Macros"
key="confluence.extra.tasklist"
description="An example macro library which generates task lists.">
<macro name="tasklist"
class="com.atlassian.confluence.extra.tasklist.TaskListMacro"
description="Creates a very simple task list, with user checkable tasks."/>
</macro-library>
</macro-libraries>
A descriptor can contain multiple library definitions, each with multiple macros.
As an example, tasklist is one of the example macros, which builds a simple task list within a
Confluence page and allows users to complete and uncomplete the various tasks simply. It also serves as
a good example of how easy it is to build add functionality to Confluence.
Here's a screenshot of the tasklist macro in action, showing a simple shopping list that's half completed:
!tasklist-screenshot.gif|align=center!
This was generated by notation like the following, with tasks completed or uncompleted by clicking on the
relevant or :
{tasklist:Shopping List}
Buy apples
Buy bananas
Purchase shopping bag
Collect laundry
Deposit money
{tasklist}
To build tasklist, go to the custommacros directory within the expanded distribution, and run:
and then restart your Confluence instance. Similarly you can uninstall the library like so:
Note: Confluence must first be shutdown before you can uninstall macros.
Old Documentation
This documentation refers to Confluence 1.1 and 1.2. As of Confluence 1.3, macros have been
incorporated into the plugin system. For information on how to manage plugins, read Installing and
Configuring Plugins manually.
Since Confluence 1.1, users can enable and disable macro libraries and individual macros through the
web interface.
• Libraries - There are 4 macro libraries installed (Basic, Compatibility, Advanced and HTML macros).
There is also the special User Macros library, see User Macros for more detail on how to create your
own user macros.
• Disabled libraries - The Compatibility and HTML macro libraries are disabled here. You can see that
because their tabs are greyed out. A disabled library is installed in Confluence but not usable within
any page.
• Selection - The Basic macro library is selected, and 6 out of it's 7 macros are enabled currently.
You can disable individual macros or entire libraries through this macro management interface.
A disabled macro will not be usable within Confluence. If it is used, a simple error message will be printed
and the macro will not be run. For a disabled library, none of it's macros will execute.
To disable a macro - locate it's macro library, then click the 'disable' link next to it.
To disable a library - click on the enabled library's name in the tab list on the left of screen, then click
'Disable library' at the top.
To enable a library - click on the disabled library's name in the tab list on the left of screen, then click
'Enable library' at the top.