How to handle Unique page names in confluence?
Asked by Fabian Lopez:

I have one space with the documentation of our products. We have in the same space (for specific version) the User Manual, Admin Manual, config manual, etc.

Each of them have a page/section called "Introduction", "Overview" "How to..." etc.

I understand that we can have "unique" pages names on confluence in the same space and that the "tinyurl" is unique. My question is why Confluence is using the "pagename" (that could be edited anytime") as index instead of the tinyurl?

What is the workaround recommended to handle pages with the same name on the same spaces as it was described below?


Answers:
author: Kevin Buchs
body: Another work-around is to put all the content into one page. This probably becomes a pain to edit, but you could present an efficient interface to the user by using {toc} and/or {cloak}/{toggle-cloak}.

You might also {include} the contents of other pages for the subsections which have prefixed names but then the user will only see the headings on the main page, which don't need to include a prefix.

Oh, another thing, Confluence itself maintains many-many spaces on its documentation \[wiki instance\|<http://confluence.atlassian.com/dashboard.action>\]. You can use Space groups for organization (e.g. for each product).

Oh, and another thing, with regard to my original answer, you can generate a table of contents by hand, which can contain labels that lack the prefix while still linking to a page with the prefix, e.g. \\\[Introduction\|UM_Introduction\]

comments: author: Fabian Lopez
body: I will review which method to use. I need to consider the potential need of exporting the content to word or pdf with Scroll Office.

thanks for your input


author: Markus Majer
body: Just use an tag in front of your site, like \[CLIENTNAME\] Introduction - this makes the pagename unique and also helps you finding the page with the search ajax field - if your search results are ten times entries Introduction, it makes no sense.


author: Kevin Buchs
body: Confluence is using the tiny URL behind the scenes, but the page name association is used **so that** you can change the page name whenever you want.

I suppose the solutions are obvious:

1. Create a prefix or suffix which you use on all page names of a group, e.g. UM_, AM_, CM_.

2. Create a separate space for each of your manuals.

comments: author: Fabian Lopez
body: Thanks Kevin. I thought about that, but I am really questioning why if Confluence has the tinyurl as unique identifiers Atlassian is using the page name as index (which is not unique and it can be changed anytime per the user). Iwas hopping to have a better fix on this in the upcoming confluence 4.0 release.

The acronymn is a good workaround. The spaces in our case is not a good idea due that we have more than 30 products with multiple versions released every year. We will prefer to keep one space per product per release to contain all the documentation. I think acronym could be a better approach in this case.


author: Fabian Lopez
body: Actually it is a workaround but not the best one, due that you will see on the table of content the UM_Overview instead of just the plain Overview.

but it will work for now


author: Kevin Buchs
body: Fabian: Confluence does reference the human-readable page name for that is easier to remember and reference. It sort of fits the Wiki ideal of hyperlinking as much as possible whenever you make a reference to it. If we had to look up the tinyurl every time we wanted to insert a link, it would get old quickly.


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