Confluence Questions set up like answers.atlassian.com

[kiralybalazs]

Hi,

We'd like to have a similar page set up like answers.atlassian.com using Confluence Questions.

The requirements are:

• separate domain from Confluence (eg. answers.xy.com while Confluence is wiki.xy.com) - not a simple redirect
• SSO using crowd

Well, that's it. Is this possible? What do I need to do to have a setup like that?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

If you cannot live with a redirect, it will have to be a separate installation of Confluence. That will mean a separate license too. 

[kiralybalazs]

Thanks for the answer.

A simple url redirect would be, well, not the desired solution.

Is it possible to setup some Apache magic maybe (or something similar) to serve /questions on a different domain? I'm also fine with the services being xy.com/wiki and xy.com/answers if this makes it easier.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

Yes, it won't be a simple redirect. It will be done by Apache or something similar. That should be possible. Unfortunately, I do not have any code to share.

[Kurt Martinsen]

There is no problem in using Apache as a proxy and whatever domain you wish (I believe it is not fully supported meaning if you have problems concerning that part of the setup, you may get support, but it is not guaranteed). Confluence uses a server base url (https://confluence.atlassian.com/conf510/configuring-the-server-base-url-829078159.html) which might cause problems if you intend to serve the same instance from different urls.

That being said, here's a sample Apache configuration so you can find out by yourself. I've changed and removed a lot of lines, so treat this only as an example:

<VirtualHost APACHE_IP:80>
  ServerName answers.domain.com 
  
  ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/answers_error.log"
  TransferLog "/var/log/apache2/answers_access.log"
  
  ProxyTimeout 30
  ProxyRequests Off
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  
  <Location />
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
    ProxyPass  http://CONFLUENCE_IP:8090 ttl=5 timeout=300 retry=0
    ProxyPassReverse  http://CONFLUENCE_IP:8090
  </Location>
</VirtualHost>

Proxying to /questions is something I don't know how to solve since css, js and other files seem to be fetched relative to the context path provided in the server.xml and not the full Base URL.

PS. I personally use AJP instead of HTTP for the proxy https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver071/configuring-apache-reverse-proxy-using-the-ajp-protocol-802593042.html.