How to setup a simple wiki (and remove all the extras)

[Gene Lee]

Our group just signed up and are exploring Confluence to setup a simple wiki. We were hoping to set it up so users do not all the additional features of purely use it as a simple search and post wiki area (similar to Wikipedia). Is there a way to do this?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, you can create users who are not admins to get you access as though you are a user.

>By "extras", I mean the non-wiki related features like creating a blog or group specific "spaces".

Blogs are just pages that have a slightly different behaviour - they're quite handy for doing news items.  But you don't have to give anyone the right to create them.  If you don't want group specific spaces, just don't create any (you can restrict "create space" to just administrators if you want).  Also don't allow people to have "personal spaces"

>We want a simple landing page without too many options.

Confluence naturally lands on the system "dashboard".  You can change that to land on any single page you want it to, so you can pick your main space and create a simple home page with whatever you want on it.

>Additional features within the post are great (timeline, charts, word-processor interface, etc.).

There are loads of macros in Confluence for charts, formatting, grabbing data from other places, links etc etc etc.  Not sure what you mean by "word-processor interface", but the page editor is rich-text already, and if you want, you can set up WebDav to allow people to edit pages in a word-processor on their machine instead of the built-in editor.

In short, you don't want a "simple wiki", you actually just want Confluence with blogs and "normal users can create spaces" restricted or turned off!

[Gene Lee]

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe I need to play around with this more to see how it can be configured and simplified. I might also be seeing a lot of extra options because I'm an admin. Could I setup another account with normal permissions so I can see what that looks like?

I actually really like the special features given for creating wiki posts and want to keep that. By "extras", I mean the non-wiki related features like creating a blog or group specific "spaces".

We want a simple landing page without too many options. Maybe a company logo and then a search box. It doesn't need to be cluttered with the recent comments/posts. They should automatically be searching the one main "space" we create. No option to view or create any other spaces (or even know what spaces means). No options to start a blog, Q/A collaboration, social media/crowd sourcing, or anything extra like that. Just search the wiki and post to the wiki. Additional features within the post are great (timeline, charts, word-processor interface, etc.). Is this possible?

The goal of this project within our company is a wiki solution without any extra distractions but does the wiki part very well.

[Milo Test]

To add on to Nic's comment, Confluence can be used just like Wikipedia if you want, but I think people don't realize how much more difficult it is to do simple formatting with the wikimedia (Wikipedia) engine.

Some of the "extras" include a word processor-like interface so your people can do more quicker and easier. Furthermore, some of the "extras" makes interlinking and searching for other pages ("articles" in Wikipedia lingo) easier, more robust, and dynamic.

So absolutely, start with Confluence as a simple search and post wiki. And when (not if) your users ask if the info can be displayed a certain way, you'll say, "Sure, thanks to these 'extras'."

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Depends on what you define as "extras"?

Some stuff can be turned off, but one of the reasons for choosing Confluence is that it is powerful and clever, so an obvious question is "why are you using it if it's overkill for your usage"?