Editing the Site Welcome Message

The site welcome message appears at the top left of the Confluence dashboard, between the site logo and the list of spaces. You can use it to display an introduction to the site or a message of the day.

To edit the site welcome message,

On this page:

The Default Site Welcome Message

By default, the site welcome message looks more or less like the screenshot below, starting with the words 'Welcome to Confluence' and ending above the list of spaces.

To restore the default site welcome message and remove your customised message, just delete the text in the 'Site Welcome Message' text box. Provided that you have not customised Confluence, your Confluence users will see the default message if there is no text in the 'Site Welcome Message' text box in your Administration Console.

Screenshot: Site welcome message at top left of the dashboard

Example 1. Adding a Simple Welcome Message

Let's say you want to display a simple message like this at the top of your dashboard:

To produce the above welcome message, follow the step-by-step instructions above and add the following wiki markup into the 'Site Welcome Message' text box:

h2. Welcome to the MyCompany Wiki

New to MyCompany? [Find out about your induction|DS:Company Induction].

Otherwise, [have fun|DS:Have Fun], because you can't always work!

In our example, the links point to two pages in the Confluence Demonstration Space, 'DS'. If your Confluence site does not have a 'DS' space, the links will be broken. That's OK, because you will want to replace them with links to your own pages anyway. This is just an example.

Example 2. Formatting your Welcome Message

Now let's say you want to put the words into a panel and add some spacing, so that your dashboard looks like this:

To produce the above welcome message, follow the step-by-step instructions above and add the following wiki markup into the 'Site Welcome Message' text box:

{panel}
h2. Welcome to the MyCompany Wiki

New to MyCompany? [Find out about your induction|DS:Company Induction].

Otherwise, [have fun|DS:Have Fun], because you can't always work!
\\
\\
{panel}
\\
\\

Example 3: Including Content from Another Page

It may be easier to write your welcome message on a normal Confluence page and include the page into the 'Site Welcome Message' text box. Using a normal page means that you can:

• Write the message using the Rich Text Editor rather than wiki markup.
• Preview the content of the welcome message before saving it, using the page editor's preview feature.
• Allow other people, who are not Confluence administrators, to edit the welcome message.

To include content from another page:

1. Create a Confluence page as usual and add your welcome message as the page content. Remember to limit the size of the content, because it must fit nicely onto the dashboard. For this example, let's assume you put your page in the 'DS' space and the title of your page is 'Dashboard Welcome Message'.
2. Add page permissions or space permissions to suit your requirements. You may want to restrict the editing of the page to a group of people, or you may want to allow any employee to edit the page. This will determine who can update the welcome message on the dashboard.
3. Follow the step-by-step instructions above and add the following wiki markup into the 'Site Welcome Message' text box:

   {include:DS:Dashboard Welcome Message}
   

   In the above example we use the {include} macro to display the content from the given page. See the guide to the include macro. In our example, the space key 'DS' and the page name 'Dashboard Welcome Message' are variable. You can use any space and page you like.
4. Save the site welcome message. The dashboard will display the content of the page immediately. Similarly, if you or anyone else edits the page, the welcome message on the dashboard will change as soon as you save the page.

Example 4. Adding Blog Posts Filtered by Labels to your Welcome Message

Looking for more advanced ideas?

How we Use the Site Welcome Message at Atlassian

Atlassian makes great use of the welcome message on our internal Confluence wiki. Here is an example of the dashboard as it appeared on a certain day:

The welcome message itself contains just an {include} macro:

{include:STAFF:Extranet Homepage}

The include macro allows you to include the content an entire page onto another page. This particular page lives in the STAFF space, where anyone can edit it. It usually shows some amusing picture or company-wide notice. The featured photo generally changes once a week or so – whenever someone feels like changing it. The page itself has over 600 edits by many different people.

The page also includes an edit link, for quick access to change the welcome message. We have the Composition plugin installed which allows you to use the {float} macro.

Our wiki markup in the 'Extranet Homepage' page looks something like this:

!Clover Dukey.jpg|width=200!

{nodisplay}
This is the content that goes on the Extranet homepage, above the spaces list.

NOTE: KEEP YOUR PICTURES SMALL (<80KB) -- USE JPG FOR PICTURES, WIDTH 400
{nodisplay}
h4. Experimental blogroll: All posts labelled "extranet-dashboard"

{blog-posts:content=titles|labels=extranet-dashboard|spaces=@all|max=10}
If you want to promote a good post to stand out from the eac white noise,
just add the label *extranet-dashboard*. To avoid inflation please use the
label carefully.

{float-right}
([edit me|http://extranet.atlassian.com/pages/editpage.action?pageId=603422736])
{float-right}