Very New to Confluence Configuration - Need help to change Server Base URL

Question

Hello,

I have used Confluence at a previous employer's and LOVED it. I have now joined a very small company and have championed the idea of using Confluence here too. I have finally received approval, installed PostgreSQL, and installed a Production version of Confluence but now I'm stuck. Please note that I am not a System Administrator and had nothing to do with setting it up before, but am willing to learn from anyone who can help me!

I installed everything on a server in our office that everyone can access. I can use a browser to go to http://localhost:8090 while on the server PC and access Confluence. However, on my own PC which is on the same network, I tried using the server's IP in place of 'localhost' but can't connect. I get this:

This site can’t be reached

IP Address refused to connect.

* Search Google for IP Address

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

I have found the article Configuring the Server Base URL and see in Confluence where I can change it in General Configuration > Server Base URL, but how do I know what URL to change it to? If I edit it to be "http://<company_website_URL>/confluence" will this affect our website at all? And if I use that URL, will Confluence be private to only those on our network?

The article says: "If Confluence is installed to run in a non-root context path (that is, it has a context path), then the server base URL should include this context path. " How do I know if this is the case? I did the standard installation.

Okay, I'll stop asking questions for now - baby steps, right? Anyway, if someone could help me understand the next steps necessary so that I (and then others) can access our Confluence instance from other work PCs I would really appreciate it!

Thank you!

Heather

AnnWorley · Answer

Hi Heather,

Happy to hear you can access Confluence from your desk now!

Since you are running Windows I recommend using IIS for a proxy: Proxying Atlassian server applications with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)

Only your network team knows whether there is a port open on your firewall from the Confluence server to the Internet. I hope you can reach out to them to find out. There is nothing in the Confluence application that controls access from the internet, that is a matter for your IT infrastructure team.

You are correct that it will be a good idea to collaborate with the email admins to set up email. You will need them to provide a service account to connect to the email server, as well as a hostname and port. Here is our doc: Configuring a Server for Outgoing Mail

Cheers,

Ann

Heather Thomas · Answer

Hi Ann,

Thanks very much for your reply! It turns out that I was using our public IP address of the network and not the private IP address of the server. But while trying to figure all this out, the positive is that I was able to learn a lot about Windows Firewall with Advanced Security which we do have installed on the server. It looks like the installation may have added the Inbound Rules that I needed already so I am now able to access Confluence from my desktop!

I was able to set a DNS entry on my local computer and I changed the Server ID to http://confluence.company - so now if I type 'confluence.company:8090' in my browser I can get there. I haven't been able to figure out how to proxy port 80 to port 8090 yet, but I don't mind that for now. But if you could point me to some instructions for that, I would appreciate it!

Next I will work on setting up the email server - I think I need more info from the owner about our email settings to do that though.

One more question - is our Confluence instance only accessible through our network? We want to keep it all internal, making it impossible for someone outside of our network to access it (even with the proper credentials). Do we need to do anything additional for that to be the case?

Thanks again - your help is appreciated!

Heather

AnnWorley · Answer

Hey Heather,

It sounds like you did a good job installing Confluence since you can access it in the browser on the server.

Your idea of using http://<IP_address>:8090 should also have worked. It sounds like something is blocking your workstation from connecting to port 8090 on the Confluence server. My bet is that Windows Firewall on your server or some other device is blocking port 8090 from external connections.

The context path is set by editing files on the file system so if you didn't do that, you need not be concerned about /confluence. The symptom of accessing without a context path when you need one is usually a blank screen, not a "connection refused" message.

After you get connected from your desktop, if you want to use a friendly URL like http://confluence.company:

* you will need to proxy port 80 to port 8090 to get rid of the :8090 on the URL
* you will need to make sure confluence.company resolves to the IP address of the Confluence server; a DNS entry is needed.

Thanks,

Ann