Once the Confluence application is installed and you can log in as the Administrator, you should consider following this document’s steps to ensure the basics are completed. We’re going to cover setting up automatic backups, corrections to the Base URL (if needed), adding a user, configuring email settings and setting the logo.
See more AGIX Confluence documentation here.
Confluence can be configured to source users from LDAP (including Active Directory) but we’re going to use their internal user database to keep things simple.
Table of Contents
Site Name and Logo.
We’re start by setting the Site Name and logo. Log in and click the Administration “cog” at the top right of the page. Click the “Site Logo and Favicon” menu item in the left column menu. Set the “Site Name” to something your business will be happy with. Next click the “Browse” button next to “Site Logo”, locate the image you want to use and click the “Save” button.
Correcting the Base URL.
Confluence defaults the hostname to “intranet.example.com” but you not want that. Log in and click the Administration “cog” at the top right of the page. Click “General Configuration” in the left column menu. It’s worth spending some time on this page but for now we want to double check, and if needed, change the “Server Base URL”. Click the “Edit” button to the right of the “Site Configuration” section and make the appropriate change. Click “Save” to apply your new settings.
Site Backups.
The good news is that Confluence has backups working by default. It’s worth you seeing how it works and reading the warning message Confluence has for you in the Backup section of the Administration portal. Log in and click the Administration “cog” at the top right of the page. Click “Backup Administration” in the left column menu. Notice the warning message for large sites. Also notice the location where your backups will appear. On a default installation, the backups will appear in “/var/atlassian/application-data/confluence/backups”.
Outbound Email.
Confluence needs to send emails for all kinds of things and one is for Password Recovery so it’s worth getting this working from the start. Log in and click the Administration “cog” at the top right of the page. Click “Mail Servers” in the left column menu. Click “Add a new SMTP mail server”. Complete the “SMTP Server Details” by specifying the “From” email address. Remember that if you set this to (for example) “confuence@example.com”, you will need to make sure that the DNS zone for “example.com” either has no SPF record (that’s nat good) or the SPF record permits sending from this Confluence server.
Complete the “Server Hostname” section. If you’re running Postfix (or any mail server) on the local server, set it to that. Otherwise set it to whichever mail server you intend to use.
Click “Submit” to apply your changes.
Add Users.
Confluence allows for users to be sources from various databases including LDAP and Active Directory. It also permits users to be sources from the local Confluence database. The later is how we’re using it here. Log in and click the Administration “cog” at the top right of the page. Click “Users” in the left column menu. The process of adding users works best when you have email working (see above) so do that first.
You have several options here. You can add users specifically or invite them. We’ll simply create users with a username and password. Select “Add Users” and complete the form. Click “Add’ when finished. The user’s details summary will appear. Repeat this for each user.
Go to the “User Signup Options” section to see what options you have available to you.