visual appearance of Confluence (Cloud)

[Steve Hastings]

Hi there,

I'm about four weeks into my Confluence introduction and I need to ask you good people for your advice please. Does anyone have recommendations on how to make a Confluence space look 'classy'? I'm thinking of the visual appeal of a Squarespace generated page for example; anything better than the out of the box Confluence product. By that I'm trying to suggest that Confluence presents visually pretty plain. I can change some panel colours but that seems to be about it as far as out of the box functionality comes. Let me know please what I've missed. I've used Refined Spaces and the themes it creates are pretty but as admitted by their help desk people do not allow for consistent use across mobile devices; and lock out much of the normal page edit stuff native Confluence features. Can anyone recommend please any theme add-ons that can make Confluence pages look great yet still allow for full functionality and work beyond just the desktop? Thank you! Steve

[Aron Gombas _Midori_ · Accepted solution]

There are a family of apps commonly known as "themes" for Confluence that allow tuning the look and feel or just make Confluence prettier.

See: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?category=Themes%20%26%20styles&product=confluence

(For the cloud, the options may be limited, but for Server and Data Center there are really powerful themes.)

[Daniel Smith · Accepted solution]

Whilst the 'look' is one aspect, don't forget the importance of content!

Keep things simple/uncluttered, use gadgets where possible to reduce administration of updating content/links etc.

Make sure your most relevant/widely used content is easily accessible from the main landing page, not hidden away under several levels of pages.

The following article may also provide some guidance...

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/confluence/create-engaging-confluence-pages-4-easy-steps 

[Steve Hastings]

Hi Daniel. Thank you very much for your advice. I'm trying to convince people to go Confluence v SharePoint; and aesthetics are part of the battle. That's a great link you've shared. I'm going to work through it. I DO have this thought though that if Atlassian could buy Squarespeace and marry it to Confluence.... content management brilliance plus design brilliance :). Kind Rgds, Steve

[Daniel Smith]

Confluence vs. SharePoint is a common question I get!

My answer is they are trying to solve slightly different use cases.  Where SharePoint effectively works well as a document repository, Confluence is more a collaboration space - rather than somewhere to 'dump' files! in fact I always tell users to avoid attaching large volumes of files, instead the content should be included within the pages, this enables it to be searchable and people can comment/review etc.

Assuming you also have a Jira instance, the second big 'sell' is the integration with Jira allowing linking between Jira tickets and confluence pages/content.

Good luck!