Making Confluence Pages Public ? is there a way to ensure some info remains internal/private?
Asked by Beau White:

Hello community!

I saw the [announcement that there would be an easy way to share public links to confluence pages](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Introducing-public-links-for-Confluence-External-sharing-made/ba-p/2485103) and believe that we should now be able to have an internal/external knowledge base for our staff and also our customers, essentially in one space.

However, when sharing help articles, FAQ's etc, it is important that we have the ability to ensure that some content remains hidden from public view (only for our internal staff).

Is there some way to publish a confluence page to the public, but also have note sections which are only visible internally?

Or might this have to be done via a seperate field at the page level?

Or perhaps I'm thinking about this the wrong way and there is a better way to achieve this?

Look forward to reading your suggestions on the best-practice way to achieve this.

Thanks in advance!


Answers:
author: Kristian Klima
body: [@Beau White](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5426646)

We're using Scroll Documents with Variants and Scroll Viewport apps to create two documentation sites (public + internal behind SSO) from a single Confluence space.

Variants is, essentially, a conditional content app and you use it to designate which content goes where. Then you just label the pages or sections of the pages.

We designate which pages and/or which sections of any specific page (using the app's macro) will end up on the public site and which on the internal site.

In practice, the content is 90% identical but we can display jira links, internal only docs, etc. only to the internal audiences.

Example:

Public content: label = *external* , condition = only pages labelled *external*

Internal content: label = *internal* , condition = all pages labelled *external* + any page labelled *internal*

The above setup also ensures that a PUBLIC page with a *internal* labelled macro will appear in the public site without your internal section, but will contain that internal section in your private site.

It takes about 30 minutes to set up.


author: Laura Campbell _Seibert Media_
body: Hi [@Beau White](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5426646) and welcome to Community!

I agree that [@Ignacio Aredez GenAI Expert](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4462888) 's suggestion Excerpt macros could be a good solution if you use two different spaces: one for the public, and one internal with the content excerpted from the first space. You could also use the include page macro if the internal notes can be added at the top or bottom of the content.

I would just add that the public links feature you linked to works page by page; it's a great option when you have one page you want to share with some people who aren't in your organization.

For a knowledge base, I would recommend making the entire Confluence space public, not doing it page by page. Otherwise people just get a link to one, stand alone page. Sharing a space lets users navigate around multiple pages and get help self-serve style.

Another way you could achieve a public knowledge base with some information only visible to internal users would be to have all the internal notes as in-line comments or page comments, then publish the space with the app [Spacecraft](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1230544/spacecraft-theme-for-confluence-cloud-color-your-space?hosting=cloud&tab=overview&utm_source=community&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=question-2605056) (full disclosure, I'm with the company behind the app), and choose the option to hide in-line and page comments. Internal users consulting the pages from with the Confluence interface would see the in-line and page comments, but users consulting from the Spacecraft site would not.

![Spacecraft hide-show comments.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/305617iA41DDAEDFE79F585/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Spacecraft hide-show comments.png")


author: Ignacio Aredez GenAI Expert
body: Leveraging Excerpts for Controlled Visibility  
One approach to achieve a mix of public and private content on a single page is to use the "Excerpt" macro for public content and the "Excerpt Include" macro on a separate, restricted internal page. This allows you to display the same content in two different places with different visibility settings. However, it doesn't directly solve the issue of hiding specific sections within a single public page.


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud

faq

knowledge-base