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Maintaining multiple versions of pages and providing anonymous users with a choice of version

SB_ux233y

Hello.

I'm currently playing around with a trial, self-hosted version of Confluence for the past week and it's been very intuitive so far.

I'm considering utilizing it for a public facing documentation website, that would have several public anonymous users referring to my created page tree. Now I'm aware that Confluence automatically archives older versions of a page once it's been updated.

But is there a way that users can be presented with a choice (dropdown or similar) to choose between which versions of the document they'd like to see? Additionally would there be a way to 'version' these documents personally?

An example of a use case scenario would be PAGE ABC that pertains to version 1.5 of a product; the version of that page would also be ABC 1.5 since it relates to 1.5 of the product.

When version 1.6 of the product releases, the page would be updated with new features and subsequently be versioned ABC 1.6 as well; however I'd like ABC 1.5 to still be available to users that prefer to work with version 1.5 of the product.

Users would ideally choose from dropdown on the page, the version of ABC they'd like to view.

Is this possible on Confluence? A plugin perhaps to maintain multiple versions of a document that users can choose from?

Thanks.

Accepted answers

David (K15t)

Hello Sean,

what you describe is a textbook use case for Scroll Versions and Scroll Viewport.

We at K15t use them ourselves to manage and present our own documentation. If you look at it, you will find the dropdown version picker you described, which lets you look at the page content as they were in past versions. All of the content is managed in and pulled directly from Confluence.

Scroll Versions is the versioning part of what you have described and allows you to manage multiple versions of page content in one space, along with a number of other features that are useful for the creation and management of documentation.

Scroll Viewport is what we use to display Confluence content as a website and implement the dropdown version picker.

Cheers,

David

All comments

Tarun Sapra

Hello @SB

Working with Versions in Confluence is not very intuitive or user-friendly, but there is a popular *paid* plugin which you can use to work with versions.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1210818/scroll-versions-for-confluence?hosting=server&tab=overview

David (K15t)

Hello Sean,

what you describe is a textbook use case for Scroll Versions and Scroll Viewport.

Scroll Viewport is what we use to display Confluence content as a website and implement the dropdown version picker.

Cheers,

David

SB_ux233y

Thanks David, and Tarun for suggesting Scroll Versions.

David, the Scroll Versions and Viewport apps do seem to offer what I want; I'm playing with trial copies of both.

I like how Scroll Versions lets me maintain multiple versions of a document, however I'd like for Anonymous users visiting the document to view and switch between versions as well.

I understand Scroll Viewport lets me do that, but it also requires me to develop an entire theme if I understand it correctly?

I'd like for the standard confluence theme to remain (with the header/top bar especially), and essentially only want public users to be given the choice of navigating between different versions of the same space.

Even the default viewport theme seems to open the top nav bar.

Is there an easy configuration for this?

Thanks.

David (K15t)

Scroll Viewport comes packaged with the Scroll Webhelp theme, which is very similar to the Confluence theme, but does not have the top bar. Here is a screenshot of this theme without any additional development or customization:

By itself, Scroll Versions introduces the version picker in the authoring space only and is built with publishing in mind. This means, a version is supposed to be made accessible to the reader only upon publishing, whether that is to the same space, a new or an existing space.

What you technically could do is to make you authoring space accessible to anonymous users and not do any publishing at all, but this would also reveal pages which may be in progress. We do not recommend this, but it depends on what your requirements are.

Cheers,

David

SB_ux233y

David.

Thanks for your quick response.

And how would I go on to make the authoring space accessible to anonymous user groups?

I understand this means that WIP pages might be revealed as well, but perhaps viewability of these WIP pages could be influenced by user groups and permissions?

Sean.

Varunish Garg

I read the entire thread. Most of it made sense to me. However, I do have some questions.

Let's say, I have a Space named DocSp. An month after month I keep publishing versions, is there is a limitation to the number of versions that can be published simultaneously/concurrently.

Also, will links between two versions work?

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