Can I restrict what a user sees in Confluence?

[Gareth Atkinson]

When inviting a user to my Confluence Wiki they have access to everything there. I know that spaces and pages can be restricted to allow specific individuals or user groups access. However, is it possible to allow a user to only see a few specific pages (or a space) and nothing else?

[Josh Steckler · Accepted solution]

You probably need to totally revamp permissions in your Confluence instance.

You probably use confluence-users a lot in space permissions? This basically needs to be removed, everywhere. Separate the licensing of Confluence from the permission to see content in Confluence. You'll need to come up with another way to handle permissions going forward, whether it is creating more groups or requiring space administrators to add users one-by-one. 

If the user is a member of a group that has access to a space, they're going to see it. There's no way around that. Now you do have the option to restrict certain pages (or page trees) within a space, but these cannot be used to grant access. A user needs to have view permission on a space in order to see any content of the space, regardless of page restriction settings.

[Mike Rosik]

When I turn off confluence-users, I lose access to the confluence page.  I have all my users currently set as confluence-users.  I'm not sure how to go about separating the licensing from the permissions.  Please advise.