Remove erroneous custom HTML

[Kirstin Seidel-Gebert]

Hello,

I added erroneous HTML to the Custom HTML section in Confluence Administration (shame on me) and now I can't rectify it, because I'm locked out.

Is there a possibility to remove all / the specific custom HTML directly from the confluence installation?

Greetings,
Kirstin

[Kirstin Seidel-Gebert · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your reply, Amalia.

I tried that, but the bug I introduced, resulted in an empty browser window. :) I forgot an </script> tag and the whole page body was considered as part of the script.

Finally, I found someone in our company with knowledge of mySQL and we removed the faulty script via an SQL update.

Now, one question came up to me: Shouldn't the editor of Custom HTML check for such simple errors that have such big consequences?

[JamieA]

You should always test things like this in another instance. Even if jira checked for closing tags and so on, it couldn't catch all logic errors. A simple check would just give a false sense of security.

[Kirstin Seidel-Gebert]

Happily enough it was our staging instance of confluence I messed up. :) But nevertheless, it gave me some embarassment.

I agree, that user can't exspect a fully-featured HTML editor in Confluence, but I also think that some essential checks to avoid lock-out problems wouldn't be just convenient but necessary.

[Fred Bunting]

Just wanted to add my agreement that it is not acceptable that the 'Custom HTML' editor seems to have no checks whatsoever on the code entered.  It does not have to be a full HTML-syntax checker, but the fact that a missing </script> tag can render your Confluence instance irretrievably hosed, has been a long-standing problem from Confluence 2 through Confluence 5.

A Restore to Default button would also be nice ... for those of us who can see the editor, but can't edit the text boxes.

[Abilene Cruz]

Thanks Kirstin. These steps helped a lot. :)

[Abilene Cruz]

Hi Kirstin, Would you mind sharing the sql script you used? Thanks!

[Kirstin Seidel-Gebert]

Sorry, Abilene. It's too long ago, we couldn't reconstruct the SQL statement.

My colleague who has mySQL knowledge told me that he

• made a database dump
• searched for the faulty script in this dump
• looked for the BANDANAID of the database record, containing the content we wanted to remove
• applied an update (which removed the custom HTML) to this database record with this BANDANAID

Hope that gives you a hint.

[Amalia]

You can navigate your browser directly to <confluence-url>/admin/viewcustomhtml.action to delete/remove the custom HTML

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFKB/Confluence+URL+list