Pitfalls of creating a large number of confluence pages

[Pálvölgyi János]

Hi!

I'm a greenhorn in confluence.

I want to build knowledge base in confluence based on a feature tree. The feature tree has five levels of depth and currently contains 4000+ elements.

For each element I am designing three pages (text description, activity diagram and logical data model).

I want to use AURA and draw.io plugin for implementation.

If anyone has done something similar, please help me what I need to pay attention to during design and implementation. 

Any help would be welcome.

Thank you so much.

[Angela Thomas_Seibert Group]

Hello @Pálvölgyi János 

Welcome to the community. While I haven’t created a public knowledge base at this scale before myself, I’d like to inquire if it's for internal or external sharing? Also, could you elaborate a bit on what you mean by “elements” in this context? Are you referring to UI components, content structure, or something else?

I’m part of the same Marketplace Partner team (Seibert Group) behind Aura and draw.io, and I’d love to share some suggestions based on what we’ve seen work well for others.

You can structure your space (or spaces) freely with parent and child page trees that suit your content hierarchy. If you're using Aura, you're already on the right path—your individual pages will look clean and well-formatted out of the box.

However, to give your knowledge base a more professional, brand-consistent appearance, especially for external sharing, consider exploring Spacecraft to:

• Hide native Confluence elements (e.g., comments, contributors, extensions) that might not be appropriate for public consumption
• Link one or more spaces making it easy to transform your scattered pages into one comprehensive knowledge base
• Maintain full compatibility with Aura and Karma styling
• Integrate feedback tools such as JSM and Jira Issue Collector widgets to gather real-time user input right from your many intended pages
  

We’d be more than happy to give you a walkthrough of how everything works together in a combined demo featuring all these apps . You can book a time with us here.

I’m also looking forward to hearing suggestions and ideas from others in this awesome community. 😊

[Pálvölgyi János]

Hello @Angela Thomas_Seibert Group ,

thank you very much for your quick reply.
I would like to build an internal knowledge base first, but it is possible that I will have to open some parts of it to guest users (e.g. subcontractors).
The elements are, in this case, elements of a feature tree and I was thinking mainly about the leaf elements. These elements are typically content structure elements that are textual (functional, technical and architectural) and diagmram (activity diagram and logical data model).
I am most concerned about the number of elements and whether there are automations for creating page structure in this quantity.
Thank you very much for your help.

regards, János

[Angela Thomas_Seibert Group]

Thanks for sharing more about your use case, @Pálvölgyi János 

I checked in with the draw.io team and gathered a few resources for you—some of which you may have seen already:

• UML Diagrams Overview – scroll to the bottom for templates, whitepapers, and more

• Draw.io YouTube Playlist – how-to videos

While I'm not a Confluence Automation expert myself, I recommend checking out this Atlassian playlist for starters. You may also want to start a new community thread for automation-specific questions—there’s already this discussion with some responses that could be relevant.

Lastly: many of our customers use Spacecraft to organize their internal knowledge bases—with themed layouts and a default navigation sidebar that helps their users stay oriented. And yes, it works seamlessly with guest users too. Let me know if you need to get on a call with the product teams of any specific app for additional assistance. 

Kind regards,
Angela

[Pálvölgyi János]

Hello Angela,

Thank you for your suggestions.
I will look through the suggested materials and get back to you if I have any more questions.

Best regards,
János

[Angela Thomas_Seibert Group]

Hello @Pálvölgyi János 

It's been a while. How is your knowledge base taking shape?

[Pálvölgyi János]

Hello @Angela Thomas_Seibert Group 

Thanks for your question, very slowly.
The material is in many different systems and formats, which can lead to a data cleaning project or direct channeling through plug-ins.
To make matters even more complicated, my company has just realised that the body of knowledge contains different levels of security material and this needs to be managed as well. Plus, there is a kind of uncertainty in the company as to whether the information to be protected will be safe in the cloud.
So the technology is becoming clearer, but there are more and more other issues to deal with that would have been nice to have resolved with earlier.

Kind regards
János

[Angela Thomas_Seibert Group]

Thank you for your detailed response — completely understandable given the scale and complexity you're dealing with, @Pálvölgyi János 
The good news is there are strategic ways to tackle these issues. I’d be happy to walk you through how the "Runs on Atlassian" badge helps assess app security — especially for handling sensitive data. Feel free to book a time here with Seibert Products if you'd like to chat further. And, good luck!

[Patricia Modispacher _appanvil_]

Hi @Pálvölgyi Jánosm,

thanks for reaching out!

We're happy you're using Aura to make your Confluence pages thrive.  

With that many elements, a strong structure is your best friend. Mirror your feature tree in the page hierarchy, and consider using Confluence templates for your three-page-per-element setup to stay consistent and save time.

Use Aura Cards, Tabs, and Navigation macros to break content into manageable chunks.

You can take a look at our documentation, YouTube or Blog to find how-to guides.

[Pálvölgyi János]

Hello Patricia,

Thank you for your ideas.
I will check the suggested resources.

Best regards,
János