The Plugin Repository provides an easy way to install and configure plugins. If you are using Confluence version 2.3 or later, the Plugin Repository is included as part of Confluence. If you are using Confluence 2.0 - 2.2.10, you can use the Plugin Repository after you install the Confluence Repository Client. Confluence versions prior to 2.0 cannot use the Plugin Repository, so you will need to install and configure plugins manually instead.

When you install a Confluence plugin, you should consider:

• Installed Confluence plugins are located in your  confluence/WEB-INF/lib  directory (this is inside the Confluence installation itself, not your configured ConfluenceHome directory). When you upgrade or re-install Confluence, the WEB-INF/lib directory will be overwritten. You should keep a copy of all your installed plugins somewhere outside Confluence, so that you can copy them back in after an upgrade.
• If you install a Confluence plugin, and Confluence fails to restart (or does not behave correctly after the restart), you can uninstall the plugin by deleting it from the WEB-INF/lib directory.

Using the Plugin Repository

Go to the 'Administration Console' and click on 'Plugin Repository' in the left panel. The following will be displayed:
 

Along the top of the page, you'll see three items (from left to right):

• Status filter (defaults to "All Plugins"):
  • Set to "Installed Plugins" to list plugins which have been installed
  • Set to "Outdated Plugins" to list installed plugins for which updates are available
  • Set to "Available Plugins" to list plugins which are available, but have not yet been installed
• Search - quickly find what you're looking for:
  • Quickly locate plugins by searching on their title, description, vendor and other details. Just type what you are looking for and let Confluence do the rest
  • The search results are filtered by the status filter (as discussed above), so if you want to see all installed plugins from Adaptavist.com, for example, set the filter to "Installed Plugins", enter "Adaptavist.com" in to the search box and click the search button.
• Categories list - filter by category:
  • Simply choose the desired category from the list and only plugins relating to that category will be displayed.
  • Note that plugins can exist in more than one category to make them easier to find

Under the filter options, the list of plugins matching the current filter settings is shown in a table:

• Plugin Name
  • Displays the name of the plugin (linked to the detailed information page), the plugin vendor (linked to their website if applicable)
  • Click the "+" icon to expand the information display showing plugin description; click the "-" icon to hide it again.
• Payment - can be one of the following:
  • Free (self explanatory)
  • Donate (it's free, but you should consider donating to keep it that way)
  • Buy (it's commercial - click the link to show a price list and purchase online)
• Status - shows the current status of this plugin in respect to your Confluence installation:
  • Installed - installed and up-to-date
  • Outdated - installed, but there are new versions available
  • Available - not installed yet
  • Non Repository - a version is installed which is not in the repository
• Install - Install, upgrade or unistall a plugin
  • Install, upgrade, uninstall
  • When installing or upgrading, everything is automatic (ie. it downloads and installs for you, etc). Although the client (since 1.0.2) warns you of dependancies and (since 1.0.3) will do its best to check what has been downloaded is what you asked for - Confluence may break as if you had uploaded the plugins to the Plugin Manger yourself. Where it can, the client will error constructively allowing you to choose the best course of action for yourself. In general, things usually work - and if they don't its a bug with the client or the metadata.
  • If the Confluence Repository Clientencounters a password request when downloading the plugin (usually case with Commercial plugins), you will be prompted for a username and password.
  • If the plugin is installed into WEB-INF (or otherwise uninstallable) it will display "Manually Installed" where the actions would be.
• Enabled - if the box is ticked, the plugin is enabled, otherwise it's either disabled or partially disabled. You can enable or disable individual modules within the plugin from the plugin details screen (see later)

Note: You can click the table headings to sort the table. Click a second time to reverse the sort.

Viewing Plugin Modules and Versions

When you click the name of a plugin on the Plugin List, you'll be taken to the detailed view for that plugin.

General information and plugin module details are shown at the top of the display and from here you can disable or enable individual modules.

Near the bottom of the display a table clearly outlines all versions and shows which you have installed. Just like the plugins list, you can click the "+" to expand the details shown for a specific version.
This screen also allows you to quickly install, upgrade, downgrade and uninstall any version of the plugin.

Configuring a Plugin

There are various settings on the "Configure" tab.

The most important of these is the "Repository Path URL" setting - without this, you'll see no plugins in the list and will get a fair amount of errors.

The "Earliest Development State" allows you to filter the plugin list to versions at or above a specific state: Alpha, Beta, Prerelease, Stable. By default "Prerelease" versions are shown. If you are running in a production environment, you will usually want to set this setting to "Prerelease" or "Stable".

The "Only Show Plugins Confimed as Working" setting allows you to restrict the list to only show plugin versions that are specifically known to work with your version of Confluence. It's important to note that in many cases, plugins will work with your version of Confluence but they might be marked as "unknown" compatibility if the plugin author hasn't been able to test with that specific Confluence version. As such, it's extremely useful if you find an "unknown" version of a plugin to work (or not work) with your Confluence that you let us know (by any means possible) so that we can update the repository to reflect this.

The "Hide Empty Categories" setting allows you to trim down the categories list by hiding categories that don't contain a plugin yet.

The "Automatically Refresh Cached Data" setting allows you select the interval at which the cached repository data will be looked up again. This defaults to 1 hour but is selectable from 5 minutes to Never (the latter which is what versions prior to 1.1 will be fixed to).

Uploading a plugin that is not listed in the Plugin Repository

There are several plugins that are not currently listed by the Plugin Repository which need to be manually uploaded either as a file or from a remote server URL.

1. Click the "Upload" tab
2. Enter either the file name or the URL of the remote server URL
3. Click the "Install" button.

Debugging a Plugin

If you are having problems with the repository which appears to be down to proxy issues, click the "Debug" tab. This allows you to test the downloading of a file and will output the relevant log information inline on the page. No more digging through server log files!