Below are some important notes on upgrading to Confluence 5.0-Beta2. For details of the new features and improvements in this release, please read the Confluence 5.0-Beta2 Release Notes.

On this page:

Upgrade notes

Easy Reader theme is no longer available

Confluence 5.0 and later releases do not include the Easy Reader theme. We are moving towards a single Confluence theme that presents a simplified default experience. At the same time, we want to make it easy for add-on developers to extend Confluence with custom themes. Our analysis has shown that very few Confluence sites use the Easy Reader theme.

If your Confluence site currently uses the Easy Reader theme, your site and the spaces that use the theme will be automatically transferred to the default theme when you upgrade to Confluence 5.0.

Destination of links to top level of space is no longer configurable

We have removed a little-used option from the Confluence site configuration. Up to now, Confluence had an option called 'View Space Goes to Browse Space'. It determined what happened when people clicked a link that pointed to the root of a space. For example, http://my.confluence.com/display/MYSPACE.

If the option was set, Confluence would direct people to the 'Browse Space' view instead of the space home page. Now this option has gone, and Confluence will always direct people to the home page of the space when they click such a link.

How does this affect you?

• You do not need to do anything.
• The 'View Space Goes to Browse Space' configuration no longer applies to any spaces, even if you had previously selected this option.
• When people click a link that ends in the space key, like http://my.confluence.com/display/MYSPACE, they will go to the space home page.

Plain text email messages no longer available

Email messages are now only available in HTML format, which allows for the display of images and formatted content, such as changes made and the full content of the updated page or blog post.

Office Connector configuration restricted to system administrators

Configuration of the Office Connector was previously available to both Confluence administrators and system administrators. In Confluence 5.0 and later, this action is now available to system administrators only. See Global Permissions Overview.

Permission for page-level exports no longer configurable

Previous versions of Confluence offered a configurable permission in the space administration interface, to control who can export pages to PDF and Microsoft Word. In Confluence 5.0 and later, this permission is no longer configurable. People who have permission to view the page will also be able to export the page to PDF and Word.

Note that this affects page exports only. The space export permission is still present and configurable.

Direct access to labels view no longer available via menus

In earlier versions of Confluence, people could get to the labels view by choosing Browse > Labels. Now that the 'Browse' menu has gone from the default theme, this option is no longer available. We have decided not to add the 'Labels' option to the new 'Space Operations' menu.

To find the labels view: If you see a label on a page, blog post or attachment, choose the label to go to the labels view.

• Any page or blog post that has labels will have them listed together in a block at the bottom of the page.
• You will also see labels in the 'Attachments' view or in a listing of attachments provided by the Attachments macro.

Alternatively, visit the following URL:

<MY.CONFLUENCE.SITE>/labels/listlabels-alphaview.action?key=MYSPACEKEY. 

For example: https://confluence.atlassian.com/labels/listlabels-alphaview.action?key=DOC

Note: The Documentation theme retains the 'Browse' menu in Confluence 5.0, and thus the 'Browse > Labels' option is still accessible.

End of support for Java 6

As previously announced, from this release onwards we no longer offer support for Java 6 (JRE and JDK 1.6). Please see End of Support Announcements for Confluence.

End of support for Tomcat 5.5

As previously announced, from this release onwards we no longer offer support for Tomcat 5.5.x. Please see End of Support Announcements for 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, to be introduced in Confluence 5.0, includes a sidebar with contextual navigation. (For a preview, see the Confluence 5.0-m9 release notes.) Our plan is to include all the features of the Documentation theme into 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.

Upgrade procedure

Note: Upgrade to a test environment first. Test your upgrades in your test environment before rolling them into production.

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 Home Directory and database. See the documentation on backing up your Confluence site. If you are using an external database, perform a database backup.
2. If your version of Confluence is earlier than 3.5, then you must upgrade to Confluence 3.5.x before upgrading to Confluence 5.x. There are several reasons for this:
   
   • There were major changes to user management and LDAP in Confluence 3.5.
   • From version 3.5, you will be able to use our new automated installer / upgrader to move to 5.0. The Confluence 5.0 installer does not support upgrading from Confluence versions earlier than 3.5.
   • We recommend that you fix any issues arising from the upgrade to version 3.5.x, separately from those that may arise from upgrading to version 5.x. Please contact Atlassian Support for assistance.
   • Please read the Upgrade Notes Overview and the upgrade notes for each version of Confluence listed on that page. (There are hyperlinks to each one.)
   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.x first, confirm the upgrade was successful, then upgrade from version 2.7.x to version 3.5.x, then upgrade to the latest version. For more details, please refer to CONF-11767.
3. Download the latest version of Confluence.
4. Follow the instructions in the Upgrade Guide.

Checking for known issues and troubleshooting the Confluence upgrade

• If you encounter a problem during the upgrade and cannot solve it, please create a support ticket and one of our support engineers will help you.