How to implement an internal Thingiverse

[Max Roth]

I'm trying to create a version of Thingiverse for hosting our internal mechanical designs. 

I want users to be able to submit mechanical files, pictures and vendor quotes and then be able to view those designs in a library and individually. 

The home page will look like 

https://www.thingiverse.com/

And an individual design page will look like 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5343772

I'm totally new to confluence but I figure I need to make a custom page template for these 2 views. Does anyone have a template similar to this they could share or where should I go to learn how to make such a template?

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

Hey @Max Roth

Along with a solid page template, I'd also recommend using a solid set of Page Properties on all your pages so you can create really robust overview pages/lists. You could also think about a good labeling scheme so you can pull pages together in different ways. And be sure you also have some sort of page naming standard so it's easy to navigate your space.

If you're thinking of moving to Confluence Cloud, you could use my teams' free app Create from Template Pro so you can help keep page names consistent by adding variables to your page titles.

Our newest app, Orderly Databases would also be a really great fit, because with it, you could create a full database of all your designs, connected to pages, and all the handy metadata around each.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Yes, I'd recommend a template for each type of page. 

The first page would be implemented with a set of macros in Confluence, so it would be useful to show people how to use those macros, rather than have to try to guess how the page works.

The detail page definitely should be templated, because it's got a standardised layout, and again, you really want people to be doing things the same and not re-inventing wheels!

I've not got any to hand, but there's a lot built into Cloud Confluence already (I write, I'm rubbish at layout and making it pretty)

[Max Roth]

I'm glad that you agree that this is the direction I should be going.

Being brand new to confluence where's a good tutorial on how to make templates/macros?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Templates are actually just specialised page stored in a different place.  The best thing to do is think of it as a contentless page - you create a page with formatting, placeholders and so-on (one difference is you can put instructional text in a template, stuff that only shows when in create/edit mode on a page)

Macros are functions you use within a page to do clever display stuff when the page is shown to people.

A quick getting started guide is over at https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/create-a-template/ but I'm afraid I'm the last person to tell you about doing the clever stuff you can do with it, not a designer myself.

There are a load now built into it (it used to be a much shorter list) - I often recommend a quick look through there, see if one of them does something you want to use, and create a page from it.  Then you'll be able to copy and paste most of the content into your own template, to help get started.