Best practice: One Confluence site for internal and public data, or two?

[Everett Cavazos]

I'm seeking insight or trying to find out if there is a best practice on what is better: having one instance of Confluence to handle both internal only spaces/documents as well as a public-facing Knowledge Base, or having two independent instances of Confluence: one for internal, and one for the public-facing KB.

I'm part of a company that currently has an internal instance of Confluence that we use for internal procedures and information only. We intend to also use Confluence for our new public-facing Knowledge Base. The CTO wants a single instance of Confluence for everything: incorporate the new public-facing KB into our current Confluence install and just govern access via group permissions. However some people within the company believe that a separate Confluence server should be stood up for the public-facing instance.

Our current install of Confluence is only accessible through a specific port #, so if we go with the single instance, this would have to be removed.

Any formal Atlassian insight into this would be much appreciated, as will just insight from anyone else who has thoughts or experience with it. Thank you!

[Davin Studer]

There is no technical reason why you could not do it all with one instance. You would simply have your public space set to allow anonymous access and set it as the Confluence default space. I think the question you need to answer is are you confident enough with Atlassian's security model and your user's security prowess that you would have them all on the same server. If they are on different servers you definitely hamper a bad actors ability to get at the non-public documentation if they managed to get around Atlassian's security model or manage to phish credentials. As for a public site you might be able to do it on the cheap if you just get a 10 user license.

[Everett Cavazos]

great info, thank you sir.