Confluence Blog Posts
Confluence comes with two basic resources, pages and blog… Pages always made sense to me - they’re the stuff I put into Confluence for other people to use (there’s a biiiiit more to them then that, but I’ll cover that later). Blogs, on the other hand, remained a mystery for a while.
Personally I’ve always thought of blogs as something an individual or company will post online to share their thoughts on something. On the individual level the phrase “check out my blog” can be a bit cringe-worthy… and on the company level they can be a bit bland. This understanding may have caused me to ignore the Confluence Blog for longer than necessary, but I eventually figured out that they both exist, and are useful.
Where they are
Blogs exist in spaces (much like pages), however, instead of appearing in the “Content” section, they appear in the Sidebar.
This makes the visually one of the first things people will see when they browse the page (and something I glossed over for years..). Note that your Space Admin can turn off blogs, so you may not even see this option! If it’s missing, contact your Space Admin to see if they’ll turn it back on.
How they’re similar to Pages
Pages and Blogs share a number of similarities:
They exist in a space - Pages and Blogs exist in one, and only one, Space. This means they are generally controlled by Space access, allowing admins the ability to easily limit visibility by not providing access to the space.
They can be Restricted - Both resources can be restricted on the individual level, allowing authors the ability to hide, or control editing, one their content.
Robust editing - Both resources share the same editing capabilities (Headers, formatting, sections, etc).
Macros - Both support Macros, allowing you to easily extend functionality and interact with other resources.
How they’re different from Pages
While they do share many similarities, there are some major differences between the two resources that are important to understand.
Templates - Blogs do not support templates. This means you’ll be starting from scratch every time. Personally I get around this by using a (very) simple format for my regular blog posts (sometimes I Just copy/paste older ones).
Hierarchy - Blogs do not show up in a hierarchy (e.g. a blog cannot have a parent or children).
Visibility - Unlike pages, Blogs can be disabled in a particular space by a Space Admin. This lets admins clear up space in the sidebar if they’re not used, but can make it a bit frustrating if folks are looking for blogs, but can’t find them.
Display - Blogs are displayed chronologically, allowing folks to browse by year or month. This differs from Pages, which are displayed in their hierarchy.
What I use them for
I started using blogs to capture “point in time” updates or information and left things that update over time, or are frequently looked at, to pages (e.g. “meet the team”, policies, etc). Over time this has included things like:
Weekly Updates - Details of what a team has accomplished over a week are a great thing to put in a blog… after all, it’s not like that will change over time, and having them in the chronological format makes it easy to browse through and see changes.
Product Releases - Another item that is a great “snapshot” of what’s happened, and easy to display chronologically.
Their chronological listing can also make Blogs a great way to capture performance information, or your accomplishments over time. This makes it easy to search for them since you can filter your search just to Blogs and anything with “achievement” in the title or label.
Other thoughts
Like any tool it’s important to consider WHY you’re using it before you just jump in. Personally, I’ve found Blogs to be useful to help chronicle activities over time, but groups may find other uses for them. Some groups may also opt to hide them entirely, and just focus on pages. Neither approach is better than the other, but in some cases one may make more sense for your team.
