Can I display footnotes on a different page than the content they refer to?
Asked by Leslie_Jones:

I am creating Confluence pages that are for different audiences: software users and software developers. So far, as I've been creating the user content, I've been making notes for the developers that are either interspersed between the user content or at the end of the page. This approach is now becoming problematic because the developer notes are interfering with the flow of user content, as well as making my pages very long. Someone suggested I use footnotes to eliminate the "interspersing" problem, but there is so much developer content that I would like to have a separate page for those notes/content instead of having them appear at the bottom of the page (which is how I understand the footnotes macro to work).

Is there a way to have my footnotes appear on a separate page instead of at the end of the page on which the footnote indicator appears? Or...is there an even better way to execute what I'm trying to accomplish?

Thank you for your help,

Leslie


Answers:
author: Sven Schatter _K15t_
body: Hey [@Leslie_Jones](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/4981550),

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with the footnotes macro, so I can't really comment on that. However, I can think of two other approaches that may help you achieve what you want:

The first one would be to use an app like [Visibility for Confluence](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/202/visibility-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview). It has a [Show-If-Macro](https://docs.servicerocket.com/visibility/macro-reference/show-if) that you can configure to display content based on conditions. If your users are members of different Confluence groups, you can control the content they see on your pages that way. This works well if your users are all inside Confluence and you can manage them in groups.

If you need more flexibility and want to present your content to a wider audience that may not have access to your Confluence and/or do not have the permissions to manage your users in groups, you might be interested in a solution by my team at K15t: [Variants for Scroll Documents](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1226295/variants-for-scroll-documents?hosting=datacenter&tab=overview&utm_source=atlassian-community).

It allows you to set up multi-page documents that can have different versions and variants. In your case, you'd want to set up a "Users" and a "Developers" variant. Using the [Conditional Content Macro](https://help-cloud.k15t.com/scroll-documents/define-conditional-content) you can then make certain content show up only for users or developers, similar to how the Show-If-Macro works. So, while editing the page, your content would look like this:

![page editor.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/205662i16CEA12CBB642DE4/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "page editor.png")

In the Documents Reader, your readers could then self-service by choosing whether they want to see the developers or the users variant:

![documents reader.gif](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/205663i21E4F4B2C4190BC6/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "documents reader.gif")

This becomes very powerful when you want to export your documentation to PDF or publish your documentation as a website using [Scroll Viewport](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211636/scroll-viewport-for-confluence?hosting=cloud&tab=overview&utm_source=atlassian-community). Your users will get a picker in the website, allowing them choose which variant of your documentation they want to read:

![Variants picker in the help center.jpeg](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/205665i05FC6B0529E390ED/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Variants picker in the help center.jpeg")

Alternatively, you could also go with publishing your different variants under different domains, for example: "developers.yourdocs.com" and "users.yourdocs.com" and have the user documentation be public while at the same time requiring a login for the developer documentation.

Hope this gives you some ideas!

Cheers,  
Sven

comments: author: Leslie_Jones
body: Thank you, Sven. Both of those sound like interesting approaches. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to be able to use either one. I'm simply a Confluence user with no access to the Administrator so I can't request any add-ins.

I ended up using the anchor macro and links that pointed users to the separate page. I then provided those users with another link that took them back to the original content. It's more work and not as streamlined as I had hoped, but it accomplished the goal.

Thank you,

Leslie


Tags: cloud

confluence-cloud

footnote