When someone opens a space in confluence they'll be sent directly to its home page. This page is created when the space is created and serves as a landing page for the space. Every home page will come pre-built via a template that Atlassian has provided, which gives teams a great starting point for building a useful and compelling home page.

While it is created automatically and with a special template, a home page is basically the same as any other page in the space, however, there are a few specifics you should know about. These include a mix of technical features, like where the home page lives, and some best practices, like updating the homepage to make it useful.

Its at the top of the spaces hierarchy 

The home page is accessed by clicking on the name of the space, either in the Spaces menu, or in the top left of the navigation bar. The page itself lives at the top of the space hierarchy, which mainly means it won't appear in the content tree. This can make it a bit confusing for people who are new to confluence, but you can always get back to it by clicking on the spaces name in the top left, or via the spaces menu.

Having the home page be the top of the page hierarchy can, however, cause issues if the home page is changed (See the next section for how to do this), or if other pages are added to the top level of the space.  When this happens, those pages will essentially become invisible in the hierarchy. You can still search for them or link to them, but they'll be impossible to browse. This can easily cause frustration and friction as pages seem to disappear.

Changing the home page

By default the home page is the top of spaces hierarchy and is set when the space is created, however, you can change which page is the home page. This is done by a space admin and going to space details, and changing the space’s home page. This can be done at any time, so it’s easy to change back if you realize you made a mistake.

You can also see where the home page is in relation to other pages by opening the Reorder menu as a space admin. This will visually show you the home page with an orange icon, and every other piece of content under, or around it. This is the best place to find content that falls outside the home page (typically not something you want to do as that content won’t be visible in the space hierarchy).

The biggest issue groups run into when they change their home page is any piece of content not under the home page will seem to vanish from the space hierarchy. This can easily frustrate users as content will disappear (although it can still be searched for and linked to). Fortunately this is easily fixable by just moving that content somewhere under the new homepage.

Make it useful

The default template for a home page is a useful guide to help teams add useful information. Unfortunately one of the biggest mistakes I see is a team not curating their spaces home page. This is important as it's the landing page for the space, and should serve as guidance for visitors on where to go or what to look for in it.

Editing the home page is easy - just click the edit pencil (like any other page) and get started.  I think of the home page as a way to show people what's in the space, so typically I fill it up with links, references or general information. It can be helpful to ask someone who’s new to your team to take a look and let you know if they find it useful as their perspective can help you find blind spots in what you’ve added.

What you put on the home page will depend on what your space is for. A space for a team (Engineering, Human Resources, etc) might include information about who’s on the team, what they do or how to contact them. A space for a project might include high-level information like its scope, timeline or other information.