We have been using an in-house Confluence instance to edit our product documentation for some time now. Due to licensing restrictions, we have been exporting this documentation to HTML and then publishing it via an Eclipse IDE help center running on a Tomcat application server. We are now thinking about moving away from this as it is time consuming to export the HTML from Confluence, process it and re-publish it. Instead, we are looking at using Confluence OnDemand for our documentation needs, i.e. editing and publishing solely using Confluence.
With this in mind, I am interested in finding out how Atlassian currently write and publish their Confluence documentation. Some years ago we found a blog written about how Atlassian used spaces to manage different documentation sets for different versions of the same documentation - we emulated this for our needs and currently have a "draft" space which we use for documenting the new release. At release time, this draft space is cloned using the Copy Space Plugin and the clone is named with a product version number. The draft space then continues for the next release and the clone is updated for Service Packs.
I'm interested in finding out if Atlassian still use this method to manage their documentation or if anyone (particularly those using Confluence OnDemand) can contribute how they use Confluence for their documentation needs. Is the use of spaces still the best way to manage the documentation life cycle or are their alternatives?
