Move process between spaces is a dumpster fire

[Kim Wallace]

I recently attempted to downsize a space by relocating a portion of the content to a new space. I could not use the export/import process since it was a partial move; instead I used the move command. I tested out the Move command in our development environment, which had a recent snapshot of production. It worked beautifully in development. Not so much in production, where I waited until after hours on a Friday to perform the move. 

The message "Move Failed. There was a problem contacting the server" was the only information I got from the interface. No progress bar, no status reporting - just a single message. Looking over spot pages, it appeared no problems (other than the move failing) had occurred. The pages were all in their original place. But there were problems.

Had I refreshed my cache, I would have noted that ALL of the attachments were now gone from production. I did not know this until users began reporting broken attachments on Monday morning. My tech admin reviewed the attachments directory and found that ALL of the attachments had been moved there, while the pages had been left behind. 

A single error message. After severing the links between pages and their attachments. What bollocks. It's already insensible that there's no way to bulk manage attachments without buying an add-in (hello, it's called a grid control, think about it Atlassian). 

So now I'm going to have to move even smaller groups of pages, then re-establish their hierarchy, thus introducing even more broken links (because of course linking isn't done by Page ID but by Name - what's the point of a database then?)

So looking forward to replacing Confluence with a real content management system. 

[Donald677]

Hi, thank you for sharing this warning, losing attachments without any clear error is a total nightmare. It’s frustrating when a tool works fine in development but breaks catastrophically in production, especially with no progress bar or helpful logging. This experience perfectly sums up why many people are looking for alternatives to Confluence.

If you’re tired of broken links and silent failures, consider moving documentation to a more reliable CMS. For a cleaner approach to managing content without these headaches, feel free to click here to explore a website that handles things more transparently.

A real content management system shouldn’t sever page-attachment links after one vague error message. Hopefully the attachment recovery goes smoothly, and thanks for the honest post. Thanks.