Create a Space

When you create spaces in Confluence, you can choose to set up a space for each team, project, or a mix of both depending on your needs. You can always move pages and blog posts between spaces later if you need to.

Confluence allows you to set up a blank space, or use the handy space blueprints to make the process of setting up team, documentation, or knowledge base spaces quick and easy.

Create a space

  1. Choose Spaces > Create space in the Confluence header
  2. Select the type of space you would like to create, then choose Next
  3. Enter details of your space including Name and Space Key , and any other information you're prompted for depending on the blueprint you choose
  4. Choose Create

Each space you create will automatically have a home page, which you can customise to display relevant information for people viewing the space. Space blueprints have a home page with extra features like team members in the case of the 'team space' blueprint.

(info) You'll need the 'Create Space' global permission to create a space. 

You can also set up a personal space to store your own work, which you can share with others or make privateChoose your profile picture at top right of the screen, then choose Add Personal Space.... See Create a Personal Space for more information.

Space keys

Each Confluence space has a space key, which is a short, unique identifier for a space, and forms part of the URL for that space. Each time you create a space, Confluence will create the space key for you, but you can override the default space key if you want to make it something more memorable.

For example, you might give your marketing team's space a key of 'marketing'. You can then navigate directly to the space using a URL like this:

http://my.confluenceSite.com/display/marketing/

Choosing a space key

Each space key:

  • Must be unique
  • Can contain any alphanumeric character (A-Z, a-z, 0-9)
  • Can be up to 255 characters long

You can't change the space key after you create your space, so choose your space key carefully! Personal spaces use your username as the space key.

Space blueprints

A space created using a space blueprint will have a customised homepage, sidebar and may contain page blueprints or sample content that's specific to that type of space.

When you create a space using a blueprint, a wizard will prompt you to enter information to help set up your space. For example, the Team Space blueprint asks for the members of your team, and displays them on the homepage.

The types of space blueprints available are:

  • Team space – A great building block if you are using Confluence as an intranet or to manage teams. Team spaces highlight the members of the team, and grant permissions to those users accordingly. 
  • Knowledge Base space – This space blueprint uses search and page labels to make content easier to find, right from the space homepage. It also contains two page blueprints for creating how-to and troubleshooting articles. The templates used in these page blueprints are completely customisable to meet your needs. The Knowledge Base space blueprint also integrates with Jira Service Management.
  • Documentation space – This space blueprint displays the full page tree in the sidebar and hides other sidebar features including blogs and shared links. The homepage uses search and page labels to make content easy to find. Add the 'featured' label to any page you want to highlight on the homepage. This space does not include any page blueprints but you can create and promote templates for your documentation authors to use.

Space permissions

Each space is created with a set of default permissions. The user who created a site space is automatically granted 'space admin' permissions for that space, meaning they can then grant permissions to other users and groups. See Space Permissions Overview for more information.

(info) To create a site space you need the 'Create Space' global permission; to create a personal space you need the 'Personal Space' global permission.

Note: System Administrators can edit the permissions of spaces in their Confluence site at any time.

Notes

  • If you've set a specific theme (such as the Documentation or other third party theme) for your whole site, spaces will be created with that theme. You may not see some space blueprint-specific sidebar customisation if you're not using the default theme.
  • Administrators can disable individual space blueprints - see Administering Site Templates.
  • Spaces can't be nested (you can't have a space within a space), but can be grouped using space categories.
  • You can export a whole space, or part of a space, to  PDF, HTML or XML .
Last modified on Aug 7, 2017

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