Copy a page or use a template? The debate rages 🤼

Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 13, 2022

Big debate between some of my colleagues:

do "most" people using Confluence who need to create a new project page/meeting notes/retrospective/team process etc copy an existing page or do they use a page template?

I'm team template: you get a fresh page pre-laid out for your DACI/retro/project planning, and there is even helper text. There are so many good ones available now out of the box with Confluence Cloud.

I don't like having to remove old attachments, delete things from the copied page that don't apply (and then 3 weeks wonder "wait, was this something copied from the previous page or does this apply to the new project?").

 

My colleague is team copy page: no need to ask admins to configure a custom template. And potentially you can leave some of the page content if what you are doing is very similar.

So what do you and your colleagues do? Why do you think it's easier/simpler/better to create a page from a template or by copying an existing page?

 

3 comments

Elizabeth Barr
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 13, 2022

Templates are pretty great, but copying a page is best for when you need to use some of the same information. If a page gets copied frequently enough, maybe it needs to be turned into a template! 

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 13, 2022

Most people I've run into create from blank pages, which is a pain in the neck and something I'd actually like to disable (while still having a "blank page" template for those who do have a good need for it)

But templates, use the templates, they give you freedom to write what you want, while skipping all the manual structuring and metadata that makes a good page work well for your organisation.

Except when you need something that's already written but needs tweaks.  In that case though, why are you not referring back to that?  Or considering the use of the "include" macro?

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StephanieC August 12, 2022

Has anyone experienced issues with using copy page where a template makes more sense? We had a scenario where we had been copying a page each week for a status report rather than editing the same page and when we went to Atlassian, they advised we edit the page each week as it was causing performance issues. 

I can see where having more pages rather than editing the same page adds more data, but what about cases where weekly meeting notes pages are copied rather than starting fresh with a custom Space template? are there any technical concerns with performance in doing this rather than using templates? 

as our org's Confluence Business Owner, I push for templates, but get a lot of groans and feedback that copying is "just easier" (lazier, lol). 

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