This page is part of the guide to developing technical documentation on Confluence Wiki. We have already shown you how to create your technical documentation space. Now we offer an introduction to the templates that Confluence provides.
Quick guide to templates in Confluence:
- A template is a page with predefined content that can be used as a prototype when creating other pages.
- Templates are available across the Confluence site (global templates) or per space (space templates).
- Both 'global templates' and 'space templates', as described on this page, define the content of a page. They do not define the content of an entire space.
- To create a template for an entire space, see our guide to creating your documentation space.
- Confluence blueprints provide predefined templates and added functionality.
- You can import predefined templates from the Atlassian Marketplace.
Deciding where to put your templates
Decide whether your template is useful across more than one space.
- If yes, create a global template. You will need Confluence administrator permissions.
- If no, create a space template.
- You will need space administrator permissions for the relevant space(s).
- You may have already saved your documentation space as a template, as described in our guide to creating your documentation space. In that case, it may be useful to save your template page in your template space. When you later copy the space, the template pages will be copied too.
Creating a global template
- Choose the cog icon
at top right of the screen, then choose Confluence Admin.
- Choose Global Templates in the left-hand panel.
- Choose Add New Global Template.
See Administering Site Templates for more information.
Creating a space template
- Choose Browse > Space Admin at the top of the screen.
Note: The 'Space Admin' option appears only if you are a space administrator for the space or you are a super user (a member of theconfluence-administrators
group). - Choose Templates from the space administration options.
- Choose Add New Space Template.
See Adding a Template for more information.
Importing templates
If you have System Administrator permissions, you can download pre-defined templates from the Atlassian Marketplace in the form of a template bundle. Each template bundle contains one or more templates, created by Atlassian or third parties. See Importing Templates.
Using templates provided by blueprints
A blueprint is a page template with added functionality to help you create, manage and organise content in Confluence.
Confluence ships with some predefined blueprints. You can also download additional blueprints from the Atlassian Marketplace. You can customise the blueprint templates to suit your individual needs and even develop your own blueprints.
Using a template to create a page
When people create a page on your Confluence site, they can choose to base their new page on a template.
- Go to the page that will be the parent of your new page, and choose Create.
- You will see a list of all available templates. Select a template then choose Next.
Next Steps
You now have a good idea of how Confluence templates work. What next? Take a look at Re-using Content in Technical Documentation.