Create same name pages within a space
Asked by stojadinovicp:

A page name should be just another attribute. It really is that simple.

Pages already have unique ids that can be used in the URL, in fact, we only share those URLs anyway, in order to prevent links breaking when the title changes.

So why is it so difficult to use uniqueIds in URLs, and append the page name if you really want to?

Something along the lines of amazon URLs:

<https://www.amazon.de/Atlassian-Confluence-5-Essentials-English-ebook/dp/B00DAZUTBW/>

<https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00DAZUTBW/>

Those two links are taking you to the same page.

Right now the Confluence URLs is **https://\<confluence\>/display/\<space\>/\<page-name\>**   
And the share URL is **https://\<confluence\>/x/\<page-id\>**

Why not use **https://\<confluence\>/display/\<space\>/\<page-id\>/\<page-name\>** for the display URL and solve everyones problems?

**Is this really that hard to do?**


Answers:
author: Tomas Kazmar
body: 2022 and not allowing same name pages within a space still sounds like a bad idea except for saving money on paying the tech debt.

Especially since now the URLs should not be an issue anymore as in a link like:  

<https://foobar.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FOOB/pages/1563295745/Meeting+Notes>

One can change the string after the last slash or even completely delete it and the URL still points to the correct page.

Has this changed recently? Is Atlassian finally moving towards patching this bug?

comments: author: Yann Suisini
body: Yeah it's really a real mess to use it daily .. We have to put sometimes 4 prefix tag in the title .... It makes no sense to not fix a wrong guess from the dev team


author: Zia Hotaki
body: The Atlassian team chooses to gaslight here over admitting there is a real problem and viable solution.   

Instead of "Let's think about what our customers want" the answer is "that's too hard of a problem, and our schema is too rigid to be compatible, so let's ++***pretend***++ **it's a feature, not a bug**".

They seem to actually believe their pretending though.

The case is closed; your better option for a solution to this problem is to look elsewhere --- Notion, and the dozen others that will eat their lunch over the next \~10 years.   

There are so many things about Confluence where their solution is "Go purchase something from a 3rd party developer in our marketplace because we choose not to solve that most basic problem".


author: Dave Mittner
body: Went through a handful of posts about this but seeing as this one's still alive I'll post here.  

Yes, this is ridiculous. At multiple companies I've run into situations where I've wanted the same page name multiple times; namely when a Space is broken down by product. While products may be different they have common structures and it's **beneficial** and **intuitive** for each tree to be similarly structured and named. That means every product may have a "Development" branch, an "Operations" branch, a "FAQ", etc.  

This is data structuring 101.

<br />

"But they've made the decision,,,"

I don't care. That's not a valid rebuttal. They can change their decision and they should.

"It can't technically be done."

Bull. I've been developing software for 20 years and not ++**once**++ have I ever told anyone something can't be done. *ANYTHING* like this can be done in software. It's only a matter of difficulty.

Moreover, there's **zero** reason they can't add a secondary, optional name field to display as the header and in navigation. If it's so damned important they have a unique name for data integrity (which makes no sense since pages obviously have numeric IDs) then fine, have it. And then give us a secondary name for display that can be whatever we want. Problem. Solved.

People have been complaining about this for years and the justifications and excuses are honestly so bad it's just insulting. I'd have greater respect if they just flat-out said they don't care.

comments: author: LAL
body: Honestly ive taken the approach that if an Atlassian product is missing something crucial then it what it is.

Ive seen nothing that community really wants actually implemented and their sole focus seems to be pushing out new products to get more users while the old products still lack core functionality and sometimes out right suck.

I wasnt aware of all the Atlassian pitfalls and now im stuck with Jira and Confluence which rarely do what i really need them to do. Hooray!


author: Dave Mittner
body: I still advocate for the products since I haven't personally seen anything as evolved that provide both documentation (Confluence) and issue tracking (Jira). I was introduced to the brand at one job and I've brought Atlassian to two others now. That might be why this is so infuriating. I have skin in the game and when the products lack crucial features -- and especially when requests for features seem to get blown off -- it makes me feel like I've let people down by recommending it and that ticks me off.


author: vbergara_toro
body: I'm just going to echo [@Dave Mittner](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4960939) 's words here:

\> Moreover, there's **zero** reason they can't add a secondary, optional name field to display as the header and in navigation.

Your product's code simply cannot be so broken that you can't offer even that, an additional field to use as the display tittle. Your unwillingness to resolve this issue is truly baffling.


author: Damian Andre
body: I have a large upcoming project that could make use of confluence. I remember this hampering my efforts in a previous deployment - so I'm glad I searched, I will have to find another product for my wiki needs.


author: Franco Zinni
body: half of 2023 and still not possible, lol


author: Nicolas Remond
body: Guys, guys, guys... When dealing with brain-dead product like this, **you have to think outside of the box**.

An easy way to have two pages with the same name, is to use invisible Unicode characters.

Steps :

\* Name your first page with the title that you want, like "deadbeat"

\* Create your second page, put ?"deadbeat" in the title

\* Go to <https://emptycharacter.com/>

\* Copy the empty character

\* Paste it at the end (or beginning) of your second page title

\* Done ! You can publish it now

If you need more that two pages with the same name, just paste the empty character several time.

comments: author: Piotr Janik
body: Already mentioned in comments on \[<https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-2524>\]. Also, why use a website when the same functionality is already present in offline apps like Windows Character Map (one of the default Accessories on Windows) or BabelPad? Sounds less secure.


author: Nicolas Remond
body: Thanks for your message Piotr. About your concerns :

\* Maybe it's mentioned in the comments you linked, but when I searched how to create pages with the same name, I found this thread, not the one you linked. And in this thread, the answer you linked does not appear. Hence my answer.  
But thanks for mentioning it, it's good to have cross-reference !

\* I'm not forcing anyone to use the website. The second sentence of my answer is literally just saying to use any invisible character. The website is then mentioned, for people who are not familiar with unicode, as an easy way to get an invisible unicode character.

\* Maybe the same functionality is already present on your computer (with the default accessory on Windows), but not everyone has a Windows computer (myself included). Again, I never forced anyone to use the website, to each their own, and if you can find the invisible character without the website, this is great for you.

\* About using BabelPad : I've never heard of this editor. Do people really want to download a full-fledged application just to get an invisible Unicode character ? I'm sorry but my website alternative seems way faster and secure than downloading unknown application. By the way your message sounds like an advertisement for BabelPad ?


author: Piotr Janik
body: Character maps are pretty basic utilities. I don't use Linux every day, but it looks like there is GNOME Character Map, Ubuntu Character Map, KCharSelect. Websites are fun until there's an internet blackout of some sort, or power blackout in some setups. (I can remember the times when people bought computer magazines with freeware collections on CDs, because it was less hassle than connecting to the internet and trying to download something). I don't mind having a small utility for something as basic as inputting characters that are off the keyboard. It might or might not be as convenient as a website, but it's good to remember it's there for us.

As for BabelMap, I hesitated whether I should mention it, because I know it's pretty obscure. But I checked the English Wikipedia site for charmap.exe, and GNOME Character Map \& BabelMap are the only other character maps linked there, so I decided maybe it's not *that* obscure. (I've now checked the history of that page, just to be sure, and it looks like BabelMap's author wasn't the guy who added this link). One way or another, the program is freeware for all purposes, free of advertisements (unlike the website you mentioned) and my comment was pretty terse, so I don't feel it was much of an advertisement.


author: Kevin Strider
body: Thanks for the tip, Nicolas.  

I tried it in my Confluence and it works well.  
I put the character at the end of the name.  

Best wishes


author: atijero
body: Shame!


author: Laurens Coppens
body: Hi Stojadinovicp,

This has been asked numerous times before:

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Create-multiple-pages-with-the-same-name-within-a-space/qaq-p/138708>

<https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-questions/Pages-with-same-name-in-space/qaq-p/443236>

Its not possible, you can dig deeper in the threads as to why its technically not possible.

Regards,

Laurens

comments: author: Monique Khairuliana
body: Also the feature requests <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-2524> that's closed, with explanations from the Confluence product team


author: stojadinovicp
body: [@Laurens Coppens](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/689937): Both of those have comments closed. This, firstly, is ridiculous. Things change, technologies change, solutions may appear. Shutting the door like that is rather disrespectful to the users.

Also, how is it not possible when there is a pluging for it: <https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1219390/duplicate-page-titles-same-page-titles> Thus, clearly, it **is** possible.

[@Monique Khairuliana](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/680417) I don't understand your comment? I also disagree with the given explanation.

Maybe more effort should be focused on satisfying customers, rather than shutting them up. Just a thought...


author: Laurens Coppens
body: [@Monique Khairuliana](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/680417) thanks for adding the link to the feature request

[@stojadinovicp](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/145199)

I understand your frustration, i've had the same one in the past, but i think the explanation in the feature request is clear and the decision has been made and we need to accept this.

I have always used a work around by adding a prefix or suffix and this always came in handy when using the search.

You don't want to find 50 pages with the title "budget" without any further details.

And sometimes you just need to break it up in multiple spaces instead of just all in one.

Its all about content management using the features embedded in the product you or your company has chosen.

I don't agree with the statement, it is possible because a plugin vendor has done it.

Addons like that can have impact on standard macros, can do ad hoc rewrites when loading te page causing degraded performance, ...

The fact that atlassian chose not to implement a feature with that many votes and a lifetime of multiple years means its not easy to implement and has impact on to many levels.


author: stojadinovicp
body: "*You don't want to find 50 pages with the title "budget" without any further details.*" - There's already space name and creation time, as well as an excerpt, listed - so adding page parent is no big deal.

The only impact comes from depending on the URL or page name, which is the root mistake that should be fixed regardless of this request. There already is such a thing as the page id - the share link. It is unique **per** page and should be the only thing that any macro depends on.

The page name should be treated as just another attribute.

That's a very bad architecture, otherwise.


author: Axel Sossdorf
body: If I don't want to change anything I also tell the customer it is technical not possible :-)


author: Sean Kubin
body: To summarize, from my understanding on this matter, **Confluence** long ago made the design decision to disallow creating identically named pages within the same Space.

While counter-intuitive to some, this may have been done to nudge users to embrace the weak tree-structure format and instead create new Spaces as needed. After all, this was a *wiki, not a file system*. Additionally, it supposedly keeps Confluence snappy.

Initially, it may have also been a technical limitation but that is no longer true (since 2021+?).

In any case, the decision appears set and not to be reconsidered any time soon---or ever.

So, how do we embrace and follow this architecture?

For example, say we have the (contrived) *desired* structure in a **single Space**:

* Project A / Intro
* Project B / Intro

This won't work. Instead **we must prefix (or suffix)** to uniquely id pages:

* Project A / PA Intro
* Project B / PB Intro

Or perhaps:

* \`Project A / Intro (PA)\`
* \`Project B / Intro (PB)\`

Alternatively, whenever we run up against this limitation, it *could* *be a smell* that Confluence is hinting to us perhaps we should reconsider our organization.

Instead, we might choose to split into **separate Spaces**:

***Project A** Space*

* Intro

***Project B** Space*

* Intro

Are there any other approaches or organizational tips?


author: Geoffrey Culler
body: Apologies for bringing up an old thread here.

I know it is not technically possible to have duplicate page names within a space. As I understand it there is no strenuous naming convention other than the page names cannot be the exact same. With that being said, is there any known or possible way to automate the process of creating unique page names? This is mainly to pertain to the use of templates, for example if I were to create a specific template to keep track of funding requests for projects titled "Funding Request," would would it be possible to have confluence automatically create a the page with a title that is differentiated to prevent page duplication? Or is the only option to have the page title populated as "Funding Request" within the template and have the user accessing it add something to make the title unique?

Additionally, if I were to make the template available to users in a completely separate space, am I correct in saying that if they were to use the template to create a Funding Request page, it would not clash with a page of the same name in another space? I see the only worry in that instance being that a search for Funding request would pull hits from multiple spaces.

Thank you!


author: Sven Schatter _Lively Apps_
body: Something not really mentioned in the threads linked by Laurens is the Marketplace app [Duplicate Page Titles (Same Page Titles) by venITure](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1219390/duplicate-page-titles-same-page-titles?hosting=server&tab=versions) which I would expect to solve your problem. :)

comments: author: stojadinovicp
body: Why would anyone waste money on something that should be free and part of the framework?


author: Sven Schatter _Lively Apps_
body: I'm not sure if I would agree with calling something a waste of money when it obviously isn't part of the framework and solves your problem, regardless of your own personal expectations and wishes. I don't think the app is expensive and if you're not sure about whether it solves your problem you can always make use of a trial first.

In general having an ecosystem that allows you to get more functionality and solve problems that are not / can not be solved by Atlassian should be seen as a very positive thing, not a bad thing. :)


author: stojadinovicp
body: I can only keep repeating myself: it's a waste money on something that **should be part of the framework**.

Well, I'm glad that you don't think $3000 is expensive, but feel free to convince my managers to pay for it. (*and that's even before the fact that the app is not even available for our Data Center deployment*)

Plus, obviously the problem is much deeper than just page names, which means this app *might* break something. [@Laurens Coppens](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/689937) hinted as much.

Thus, payed app is not an option.


author: Eliot Martin
body: More functionality that should be core put behind a paywall. Every time I want to do something expected in Confluence or Jira I end up looking in the Marketplace for solutions.

It's 2022 and I still can't use the same name for 2 different pages.


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