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The Documentation theme is one of the themes bundled with Confluence.
Advance warning of plans to merge Documentation theme with the default theme
This is an advance notice that we plan to merge the functionality of the Confluence Documentation theme with the Confluence default theme. We do not yet have a specific date for this plan, and we are interested in your feedback. The new default theme, introduced with Confluence 5.0, includes a sidebar with contextual navigation. Our plan is to include features from the Documentation theme in the default theme, and then remove the Documentation theme from Confluence.
If you are interested in this change and would like to give us feedback, please add a comment on this blog post: Advance warning of plans to merge Documentation theme with the default theme. We are especially interested to know which features of the Documentation theme you use and value the most.
The Documentation theme is designed for spaces containing technical documentation, but you may find it useful for other types of structured content. It provides a table of contents for your space, a configurable header and footer, and text styles suited to documentation. (See features below.)
Quick guide to applying and customising the Documentation theme:
The rest of this page gives more details of the above procedure.
Screenshot: The Documentation theme showing the space sidebar replaced by a navigation sidebar.
Follow the steps below to apply the Documentation theme to your space. All pages in the space will start using the theme immediately.
To apply a theme to a space:
If your space is using the Documentation theme:
Note: The Space Admin option appears only if you have space admin permissions, or if you're part of the 'confluence-administrators' group.
If you have site administrator permissions, you can apply the theme at site level. It will then be the default theme for all spaces in the site. See the administrator's guide to applying a theme.
The theme works well without any customisation. If necessary, you can restrict the search to just one space, change the content of the left-hand navigation panel and add your own header and footer. The following instructions assume you have already applied the Documentation theme.
To customise the Documentation theme:
Note: The Space Admin option appears only if you have space admin permissions, or if you're part of the 'confluence-administrators' group.
Screenshot: The 'Configure theme' option
Screenshot: Customising the Documentation theme
If you have site administrator permissions, you can apply and customise the theme at site level. The customisation options are the same as the space level options, as described above.
Screenshot: A customised header, footer and left-hand panel
The above screenshot shows a wiki space with a customised left-hand panel, header and footer.
Here is a summary of the features that the Documentation theme provides:
The Confluence documentation uses the Documentation theme. If you are reading this documentation online on the Atlassian documentation wiki, you are seeing a working version of the Documentation theme.
The theme constructs the page tree in the left-hand panel from all pages that are child pages of the space’s home page. Each space has a single page designated as the 'Home' page. You can specify the home page in the space administration section.
Cause 1: Your pages are not under the space's home page. The most probable reason why your pages do not appear in the page tree in the left-hand panel is this: The theme constructs that table of contents from all pages that are child pages of the space’s home page. If your pages are above the home page in the page tree, they will not appear in the left-hand panel.
There are two ways to fix the problem:
Cause 2: Problem with upgrade from Confluence 3.1, with Documentation theme as plugin, to Confluence 3.2 or later with Documentation theme bundled. If your existing Confluence installation already has the Documentation theme plugin installed, you may find that after upgrading to Confluence 3.2 the left-hand navigation bar is empty in the spaces that use the theme. The fix is to enable all modules of the Documentation theme plugin. See the knowledge base article.
If your entire left-hand panel has disappeared when using the Documentation theme, this is probably because you have clicked the sidebar icon at top right, next to the search box. Click the icon again to restore the panel.
The Confluence user interface does not offer a way to change the default width of the left-hand navigation panel supplied by the Documentation theme. Users can change the width by dragging the middle bar, but the default width is not configurable. This post on Atlassian Answers gives a way to do it with CSS: Documentation Theme - Default Width (in px) of left panel.
You can 'hide' pages by putting them at the same level as or higher than the space home page.
Each space has a single page designated as the 'Home' page. You can specify the home page in the space administration section.
The theme constructs the page tree in the left-hand panel from all pages that are child pages of the space’s home page.
If your documentation pages are at the same level as the space home page, they will not appear in the left-hand navigation bar. So you can 'hide' pages by putting them at the same level as or higher than the space home page. The pages will show up in the search results and people can see the content if they open the page, but the pages will not appear in the left-hand panel.
More detail: The theme uses the Pagetree macro to produce the table of contents. When entering the Pagetree macro, you can choose the top page in the page tree. The Documentation theme chooses the space home page as the top page.
You can use any text or wiki markup in your theme header, footer or left-hand panel. One useful hint is to use the Include or Excerpt Include to include re-usable content into your footer.
The screenshot above shows the theme customisation options, with examples of the macros used to include content from other pages. And the example screenshot also above shows the resulting header, footer and left-hand panel.
If you want to include your own content underneath the page tree, you can deselect the 'Page Tree' check box, add your own page tree using the Pagetree macro in the 'Navigation' text box, and then add your own content under the macro.
The screenshot above shows the theme customisation options, with the default page tree deselected and a custom page tree inserted, along with additional content in the left-hand panel. The example screenshot also above shows the resulting left-hand panel.
If you want to include a an expanding list of links to other spaces, as we have included in this space (see 'Docs for all Confluence releases' in the sidebar), you can use an Expand Macro and an Include Page Macro in the 'Navigation' text box. For example:
*[Docs for all Confluence releases|_Latest Versions of Confluence Documentation]* {expand:Choose a version...} {include:_Latest Versions of Confluence Documentation} {expand}
If you would like this to display below the page tree, follow the steps above.
By default, the Documentation theme does not underline hyperlinks. If you prefer to have your links underlined, you can edit the CSS stylesheet for your space and add the following CSS code:
.wiki-content a:link, .wiki-content a:visited, .wiki-content a:active { text-decoration: underline; }
If your space uses the Documentation theme:
Note: The Space Admin option appears only if you have space admin permissions, or if you're part of the 'confluence-administrators' group.
The {spacejump} macro is provided along with the Documentation theme. You can use space jumping to link from a page in one wiki space to a page with the same name in another space, without knowing the name of the page when you create the link. When a reader is viewing a page and chooses the link provided by the macro, they will go to a page with the same name, but in the space specified in the macro. See more about the Space Jump macro.
It's not possible to remove the left-hand panel entirely, using the user interface supplied by the theme. There is an improvement request here: - CONF-25923Getting issue details... STATUS If you like, you can comment on and/or vote for that request. In the meantime, Atlassian Answers is a good place to ask the question and see if other people can help you with custom code to remove the panel.