Creating and Organizing Content

In the previous chapter, we looked at how to set up a Confluence environment. Now, we will cover pages, attachments, and other core features of Confluence that will help you quickly navigate within your collaboration environment. We will concentrate on every part of the Confluence New Editor area in this chapter. We will discuss how to create and maintain dynamic content and present practical collaboration examples on Confluence. By the end of this chapter, we’ll be ready to create and organize content with Confluence.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• Finding your way in Confluence
• Managing content
• Organizing content

Technical requirements

You will need the following software requirements to complete this chapter:

• An up-to-date web browser
• An active subscription to Confluence Cloud Premium

Finding your way in Confluence

Our goal here is to get to know the basic features and the interface of Confluence practically so that we can use this tool effectively. In this section, we’ll talk about many text-processing features from other software you might be familiar with. We want to underline an important point: Confluence is a collaboration tool with powerful text-processing features. However, its main feature is not text processing. For this reason, you may realize that many features available in text processors are not in Confluence. Being aware that these features may have been left out on purpose can significantly increase the efficiency we get from Confluence. We aim to work together; hundreds of fonts, colors, and very detailed formatting features can easily distract us from this goal, and we can get lost in the details. That’s why you’ll find only the most essential features in Confluence; this simplicity. Although you may find it strange, this will...

Managing content

In Confluence, almost all content resides on pages, so it’s essential to understand how to manage pages. Let’s cover each function available to manage a Confluence page.

Discovering the differences between edit mode and view mode

There are two different content modes on Confluence:

• Edit mode
• View mode

When you visit a page on Confluence, view mode is activated by default, which will help you interact with the content on the page.

You need to switch to edit mode when changing the page’s content. Press the pencil-shaped edit button from the menu above to switch to edit mode. You can make changes to the document while edit mode is active. After you’ve finished making your changes, you can click the Update button located at the top right. The fields that need your attention are shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 3.8 – The Update page dialog

Confluence will ask you to confirm...

Organizing content

Your Confluence environment, in which many people work, can turn into complete chaos in a short period if you are not organized. In such an environment, no one knows where to record new information or where to find the information they are looking for. The information here stays out of date, which results in wasted efforts. Things soon turn for the worse, and gradually people stop using Confluence.

Now, let's put pessimism aside and see how we can keep the environment clean with effective habits. The aim is to provide an environment where new information is quickly recorded and easily found. In addition, we want this environment to be up-to-date, complete, and fun at all times.

This section will explain how we can keep spaces and pages organized.

Organizing spaces

Here are some tips on how you can keep your Confluence spaces tidy:

• Avoid constantly creating new spaces and create a new space only when necessary.
• Archive unused spaces.
...

Summary

In this book, our primary goal is to ameliorate our team’s collaborative ability using Confluence. Although this is not an easy task, we can achieve it by mastering the interface and the basic concepts of Confluence.

In this chapter, we tried to convey all the features of Confluence’s interface. We examined the concepts of a space, page, blog post, and attachment together. Following these basic concepts, we explored how we can keep them organized. This chapter should have provided you with the necessary technical background on using the basic functions of Confluence and helped you focus on content. Now, we are ready to explore how we can collaborate with our team in the next chapter.

Questions

Answer the following questions to test your knowledge of this chapter:

1. When do you use a blog post? When do you use a page?
2. How can you keep your space organized?
3. Can you attribute more than one label to a page?
4. What are the benefits of attributing a label to a page?
5. What are the three options within page restrictions?

Answers

Here are the answers to this chapter’s questions:

1. You can use blog posts for time-sensitive content. On the other hand, you can use a page for content that is independent of time.
2. You can keep your space organized by avoiding creating a new page only when necessary, archiving unused pages, and naming pages carefully.
3. Yes, you can add multiple labels to a page.
4. Labels make it easier to reuse pages.
5. The three options are: Anyone can view and edit; Anyone can view, only some can edit; Only specific people can view or edit.

Further reading

To learn more about the topics that were covered in this chapter, take a look at the following resources:

• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/search-for-pages-and-posts/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/confluence-search-syntax/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/use-home-to-jump-into-work-and-see-whats-happening/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/delete-restore-or-purge-a-page/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/add-or-remove-page-restrictions/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/use-labels-to-categorize-spaces/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/use-labels-to-organize-your-content/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/organize-your-space/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/create-and-edit-content/
• https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/archive-pages/
• https...