Below are some essential notes on upgrading to Confluence 2.8. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, please read the Confluence 2.8 Release Notes.

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Upgrade Notes

Crowd Integration

If you are using Atlassian Crowd as your Confluence user management and single sign-on solution, please upgrade to Crowd 1.3.2 or later. With Confluence 2.8 the atlassian-user interface has changed, and Crowd 1.3.2 provides the required update to Crowd's atlassian-user integration module.

Default Order of Pages Changed from Alphabetical to Natural

Confluence 2.8 introduces the ability to move pages into any order you choose.

As part of the above feature, we have changed the default page order in Confluence, from simple alphabetical ordering to a 'natural' ordering. The natural ordering handles numeric values correctly when doing string comparisons.

Impact:

• The new natural ordering is the same as the ordering already used by the PageTree plugin, which some customers use to create a left-hand navigation panel.
• The change to natural ordering should have little effect on most users because, under most situations, natural ordering and alphabetical ordering will produce the same results.
• For customers who have inserted chapter or page numbers to force the correct order, the new natural ordering will show the existing pages in the correct order.

If you do find that the order of your pages is adversely affected, you can use the new page-ordering function to move the pages.

Plugins

Please check the following if you have added any plugins to Confluence:

• If you are using any third-party plugins, please test them thoroughly before rolling 2.8 into production.
• The PageTree plugin has been updated. If you are using this plugin, please download the latest version to ensure compatibility with Confluence 2.8.

Velocity Template Engine

Confluence's Velocity template engine has been upgraded from 1.3 to 1.5. Please test carefully for compatibility problems with existing third-party themes and plugins. For developers, there's more information about Migrating to Velocity 1.5.

Dynamic Tasklist 2

The Dynamic Tasklist 2 plugin is now bundled with Confluence. The new tasklist macro replaces the older tasklist and dynamictasklist macros. What happens to existing tasklists?

• By default, the new macro will be enabled and the older macros disabled in your Plugin Repository.
• When someone views a page containing an older version of the task list, the display will show the new format but the page will not be updated.
• When someone first adds a task or changes anything in the task list, the data will be converted to the new format.

Customised Page Layouts

The Confluence Upgrade Guide includes instructions on re-applying your customisations after the upgrade. We're repeating some of that information here, because it's particularly important due to the UI changes in this release.

If a space uses a customised page layout, the new Confluence 2.8 layout will not be applied. This means that you will not see the new menu structure within that space. For example, this will happen if you are using pagetree navigation to form a table of contents on the left.
Fix: Apply the Default Page Layout, then re-insert your custom code.

Steps in detail:

1. Go to the Space Admin screen and click 'Edit' to view your customised Page Layout.
2. Copy the customised code.
3. Cancel the edit.
4. Click 'Reset Default' to apply the new Confluence 2.8 default page layout.
5. On the Space Admin screen, click 'Create Custom' to create a custom page layout.
6. Reinsert your customised code and click 'Save'.

JavaScript Libraries

jQuery is the supported JavaScript library for plugin developers.

Advance notice — deprecated libraries: We have decided to standardise on jQuery as the JavaScript library for Confluence. This library will eventually replace all others. For this reason, use of the following JavaScript libraries in Confluence is deprecated:

• The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)
• Prototype
• Scriptaculous

Because there is a lot of legacy plugin code using Prototype and Scriptaculous, these will continue to be available for at least one more major release of Confluence.

Java Versions

Confluence 2.8 supports Java 1.4, Java 5 and Java 6. We recommend Java 6 because of its increased performance and easier troubleshooting, due to enhanced memory dump and profiling capabilities.

Advance notice — Java 1.4 will be deprecated in a future release. Confluence 2.8 will be the last version that supports Java 1.4. Please refer to the Java 1.4 Support Timeline for more information.

Upgrade Procedure

If you are already running a version of Confluence, please follow these instructions to upgrade to the latest version:

1. Before you upgrade, we strongly recommend that you back up your Confluence installation directory and your Confluence home directory, as directed in the Upgrade Guide. If you are using an external database, perform a database backup.
   
   
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 2.7.x, read the release notes and upgrade guides for all releases between your version and the latest version.
   • If you are upgrading from 2.1 or earlier, please read the 2.2 release notes.
   • If you are upgrading from 2.2 or earlier, you will need to upgrade to Confluence 2.7.0 first, confirm the upgrade was successful, then upgrade again from version 2.7.0 to version 2.8. For more details, please refer to CONF-11767.
     
     
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
   
   
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.
   
   
5. If you encounter a problem during the upgrade, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will assist you through the process.

RELATED TOPICS

Confluence 2.8 Release Notes