Getting Started

This tutorial guides you through the key steps of setting up Confluence...

Overview

This guide assumes that you already have Confluence installed and in a working state. If you are using Adaptavist's Host service, this task will already have been done. If you're installing Confluence on your own server, please see Atlassian's set-up guide

Now, assuming everything is running properly, let's go through the basic settings required to customise Confluence to your needs...

Confluence Setup

Confluence is a bit like having your own persoanl web server. Once it's configured to your needs you can start adding sites (called Spaces) in to which content can be placed.

You configure the majority of site-wide settings using the Administration Console...

• Enter the General Configuration screen:
  • Enable [USERGUIDE:Trackbacks] if you want improved linking between your site and external sites
  • Set [USERGUIDE:Public Signup] to define whether visitors can create their own user accounts on your site (not reccommended on sites with less than 25 user accounts)
  • Set [USERGUIDE:Email Visibility] depending on your privacy requirements
  • Set the [USERGUIDE:Site Title] which will appear in the browser title bar and also in some page headings
  • Set a Site Welcome Message to welcome visitors to your site
• If you have your own logo, you set it as the Global Logo
• Set [USERGUIDE:Global Permissions] to define who can see your site, who can create spaces and who can administrate it

That's it. There's loads of other things you can fiddle with at a later date, but for now Confluence is ready for action! The next step is to define some Spaces for your sites to live in...

Space Setup

Confluence allows you to add any number of Spaces. Each space is a bit like a seperate website, but you can use it for whatever purpose you desire depending on how you configure it.

It's probably best to start by creating a test space and then mess around with it to get a feel for how things work. Once you are familiar with the way things work, you can delete the test space and start work on a proper space.

The basic procedure for creating and configuring a space is always the same:

• Go to The Dashboard and Create a Space
• Set the Space Permissions to define what privileges people have within the space
• Set the Space Theme (if desired) to change the overall layout of content within the space
• Set the [USERGUIDE:Space Logo] if it's different to the Global Logo

That's it. Once again, there's loads of things you can fiddle with later, but for now your new space is set-up and ready to go!

Your next task is to add some content to your space, including Pages, [USERGUIDE:News] and [USERGUIDE:Attachments] (click the links to find out how).