can I leverage confluence to write technical documentation for our company website?

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

our company website will have customer facing documentations. Can I use Confluence to build that documentation? 

can our website utilize confluence to build those documentations or customer facing articles?

[Aron Gombas _Midori_ · Accepted solution]

Absolutely yes, many people use Confluence for that use case.

You could take two approaches at least:

1. Use the built-in public links feature. This is more feasible if you have only a few documentation pages.
2. Use an app like Scroll Viewport to generate a complete website from the Confluence content, with your own branding and design.

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

Thank you Aron. 

[Kristian Klima · Accepted solution]

Hello @Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana 

Yes, we're using Confluence and a couple of Atlassian Marketplace apps to document our product, and thousands of other businesses are doing the same. Typically, that's done via Confluence itself or an app that builds a dedicated website for you.

For example: for our site we write all content in Confluence, then use Scroll Viewport by K15t to build our doc center connected to our domain.

If you want to host your Confluence content on your own website, that's a different matter, but Confluence can export your content as XML and HTML.

Link to a webinar on how to use Confluence as a documentation center:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DJNMTy982A)

And this is how we did it: https://www.k15t.com/blog/2024/01/tools-merge-teams-unite-emplifi-s-enablement-journey-with-confluence-and-the-scroll-apps 

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

Wow, thank you so much Kristian. Very helpful. I wasn't expecting such detailed answer. thank you so much. I will explore these options. 

Lets say if we want to  host your Confluence content on our own website, would that be possible too?

[Kristian Klima]

I guess you could take HTML or XML export and build your site from that.

It's basically what other CMS do, they export stuff to HTML and then you build your last mile.

There might be an app to help you with that, there rectainly was one for the Server version.

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

Thank you Kristian. I saw Scroll Viewport and that might be what we are looking for. Is there any other similar App that you suggest?

[Kristian Klima]

@Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana 

I think there's Instant Website for Confluence but I have experience with that.

There's Refined for Confluence and Appanvil / Seibert Media's Spacecraft but both work only if your Confluence space has Anonymous access enabled.

With Scroll Viewport, your actual Confluence space can remain private (but you can set up SSO on Scroll Viewport site).

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

very nice. thank you so much Kristian. I will explore the Scroll Viewport option further. 

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

@Kristian Klima Good morning. Any idea if we have to create a external facing Confluence Site if we have to integrate with Scroll Viewport ?

[Kristian Klima]

@Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana 

No. 

You can have your cake (a private Confluence site) and eat it (a public Viewport site).

You just tell Viewport (which runs as a Confluence app) which Space you want to use to create a website from and it will.

Then you can customize the look, add links, connect your domain.... 

This is our site https://docs.emplifi.io/ - create from a private Confluence space and customized with our look and domain.

[Prerana Bhatt Koulmane Sathyanarayana]

Thank you Kristian. I have sent email to Viewport on Pricing etc. Will wait to see if it suits our requirements. 

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

No need to email anyone for pricing, as the prices are publicly available here:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211636/scroll-viewport-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=pricing