Difference between public link and anonymous access?

[Silvana Bilic Michaelsen]

What is the difference, if any, between sharing a page as a public link and allowing anonymous acces on a space (with view only privileges)? I understand, of course, that anonymous access will apply to the entire space while public link shares only that single page.

What are pros and cons of this 2 ways of sharing content publicly?

[Steffen Burzlaff _K15t_ · Accepted solution]

Hey @Silvana Bilic Michaelsen

there are some differences between the two. First the one you already pointed out that with public links you can share just one page instead of the entire space.

Another one is that if you view a page with public links the most of the Confluence UI (navigation etc.) is not displayed. This makes the reading experience a lot better.

But with public links some macros are not working e.g. all third-party. If you page contains a lot of these you rather not want to share it with public links.

As Atlassian states it:

Functionality that’s unavailable in the view-only version:

• Edit the page.
• Comment inline or on the page.
• View inline or page comments.
• See the Confluence navigation.
• See the page tree and page breadcrumbs.

Most macros, including those that contain data outside of the shared page and all third party macros.

You can read more about which functionalities are available and which are not in the Atlassian documentation.

So depending on your use case on what you want to share and what that person should be able to consume, you should go with the one or the other. But maybe there are even other possibilities. If you let me know your use case I might can help you find the best solution (at least the one I am aware of).

Cheers,
Steffen  

[Silvana Bilic Michaelsen]

Thank you, Steffen for tasking time to answer my question!

I am just considering setting up a simple FAQ-like page that I can share with a broad audience. Not searchable, but accessible having the link.

Regards,
Silvana

[Steffen Burzlaff _K15t_]

Then I'd say that the public link might be the better solution for you. The basic macros usually used on an FAQs page are available to the readers and you only would need to share that once page instead of the whole space.

Cheers,
Steffen