How do I write HTML code instead of using WYSIWYG

Question

Hi Team,

Its been 4 days I  joined a team which is using confluence to implement knowledge base.

I have got access as a space admin. I need to create some web pages in a space.

I don't have an option of installing HTML macro Addons. Even the confluence admin does not have.

How do I do coding in html. Is there anyway we can switch between design mode to source mode and write html and css code instead of using editor where I can't write html.

I am not sure about hosting. Is it something which can be resolved

pl help

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Yes, there's lots of development resources out there.  It looks like you've already found the documentation I'd point you at though, so have a look through it.

User macros in particular could be very helpful for you - if your reason for wanting to write html is "we have this bit of stuff we want to do in many confluence pages, but Confluence can't do it", then a user macro could solve it.  If it's complex and interactive though, you're probably into writing a plugin (Connect is currently for Cloud services only, but will be in Server Confluences sometime in the future, and writing your own plugins is for Server version only)

Bhavya · Answer

Thanks again Nic.

I was just wondering to know more. Because confluence developer documentation has many things like

user macros
confluence connect framework
working with SDK
Writing own plugins

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

No, because it's not aimed at writing HTML, it's aimed at end users not needing to know html to use it.

As Shawn has said, you can enable the (risky) html macros and do something in there, and I stick to my recommendation that you should *only* do that when you have snippets of stuff that can't be done in a plain editor - don't try to write whole pages, use it sparingly.

CSS you would need to do in the space settings, if your theme allows for it, but that has a global effect across the space, so you need to be careful with it.

Javascript, I strongly recommend staying well away from, as Confluence simply isn't built for you to inject arbitrary scripts into it and they make maintenance (especially upgrades) an absolute nightmare.

Again, if you want to write in HTML, I'd stop using Confluence.  If you want the odd snippet and can *completely* trust *all* your users to not write malformed html, then enable the html macros.

Also consider all the formatting addons you can get from the marketplace - many of these are far better than abusing the html macros, and a lot of them are free.  They have the advantage of not opening security holes, not letting your users break things with broken html, and they are a lot easier to use.