Is it possible to have a Search Page that is open for public in Confluence?

[Steve P]

Hey everyone, I'm Steve, an instructional designer, and I create training materials such as LMS and KMS for a company.

I wanted to ask if its possible to make a search option public in confluence.

I was able to create a search bar that works on the 'edit side of things, you can check out screenshot #1.

But when you view it as an external user, the search bar is not accessible., Please see screenshot #2.

Although I have made every page public,. the search option is still saying, "You don't have access to see this content."

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

Thanks

[Kristian Klima · Accepted solution]

Hello @Steve P and welcome to the Community.

Making individual pages public means exactly that. They are individual pages.

To allow searching in your space, you need to set the spae permissions to allow anonymous access (for viewing).

Alternatively, you can use Scroll Viewport by K15t to create a dedicated public doc center from your private (no public access) Confluence space. You will, basically, separate your Confluence where you can edit etc. from your website for content consumption.

It will then look smth like this. 

[Steve P]

Hi, @Kristian Klima

I actually did what you suggested but for some reason, I could not see the space I created in the space permissions. 

I also skimmed at scroll viewport. Looks great! But I wanted to exhaust all efforts into confluence before branching out to paid apps that might disconnect in the future. 

I also realized that I did not paste the screenshot properly. So here is my dilemma from the start of this post:

I was able to create a Search Macro and it works on the edit side:

But when I share this link: it comes up as this:

" You dont have access to this content" despite the page being for public use"

[Kristian Klima]

This is a space on my own Confluence

https://d-art-s.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DT/overview?homepageId=106856578 

And here's the settings.

Here's where things get interesting. If you allow Public links on your site, you have TWO ways of sharing the link to a single page.

Here's the PUBLIC link to a page generated via Public link feature

https://d-art-s.atlassian.net/wiki/external/N2NkYzEzNDljNzAyNGVjZGIxM2NjYTY1NzE3NjQxMDI

And here's a link to the same page taken from the actual public version of the space: https://d-art-s.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DT/pages/106954906/In+Other+Silences 

In other words, if you allow public / anonymous access to a space, then the Public Links institution is a confusing redundancy.

Could that be an issue?

[Steve P]

Here's the PUBLIC link to a page generated via Public link feature

https://d-art-s.atlassian.net/wiki/external/N2NkYzEzNDljNzAyNGVjZGIxM2NjYTY1NzE3NjQxMDI

Yes, I was able to achieve this. The page itself is public. But the the Search Macro isn't.

Here's the link to the actual page that I want the users to see:

Knowledge Base 

as you can see. The page itself is public and can be seen for external use. but the search macro isn't.

Here is my space permissions:

I have hunch. could it be that the Search Macro will only show as public of the children pages are public? because here is what I want to happen:

I'm using the space overview as a means for the main page with the search macro. ( the one encircled in orange. )

The contents of what should come out when searching are the parent pages together with their children pages. (encircled in green). 

Everything works in these "edit" mode. But when I use the Public Links:

The page does display publicly, but the search macro is still hidden:

so really the issue that I am really focusing on is having that Search Bar/ Search Macro to come out publicly. =)