How to create dynamic pages in Confluence Cloud
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How to create beautiful and dynamic pages in Confluence Cloud
Jarin McClinton
13 November 2024
5 min read
Jarin McClinton
13 November 2024
5 min read
Confluence is one of the most important team workspaces your organisation will use. Your team can share work, organise vital information, and retain and share your most critical knowledge. If you use your instance regularly, your Confluence pages and spaces become a repository for all the knowledge your workers have gained as individuals and as a collective—ready to be accessed for the benefit of new employees or even clients. However, we say ‘if’ you use your instance regularly because we know that that's not always the case.
You may spend hours crafting and fine-tuning your Confluence pages and find that your teams still waste time looking for the answers everywhere except your wiki. Often, the problem doesn't lie with Confluence or your content. It's the way it's used or presented.
A few simple macros can turn your lifeless (and lengthy) Confluence pages into engaging and easy-to-digest content hubs that your teams will come to rely on every day.
Why you should create more engaging Confluence pages
If you've been using Confluence for a while, you may wonder whether it's worth taking the effort to restructure or tweak the layouts of your content. But there are several compelling benefits to creating more engaging Confluence pages:
It organises your content in a way that makes it more user-friendly
If you work on software or technical projects, your Confluence pages can become hard to maintain (and read!) over time. When documents become text-heavy and overly long, users start storing them in different locations or find it much harder to skim through the copy to find what they are looking for. A few time-saving macros (like a table of contents) and best design practices (like utilising white space and attractive templates) can save a lot of time in the long run.
It makes it easier to collaborate
Confluence comes with a collaborative editor so that team and stakeholders can discuss, comment, or create release notes. Collaboration and knowledge-sharing will automatically increase if the content is structured well, engaging, and easy to navigate.
It improves transparency
For agile teams with big projects that need to stay in touch and in sync, Confluence can be a lifesaver. Jira templates can generate reports, which can be turned into time-saving Confluence pages. However, it can be hard to find the information you seek if it's not well-organised. Reduce the duplication of efforts and give your team access to the information they need through easy-to-use templates and macros.
How to create more engaging Confluence pages
Creating more engaging pages is easy if you use either the built-in Confluence macros or third-party macros found in Marketplace. Macros are add-ons that can be used to extend the functionality of your Confluence pages.
Provide breathing space
Too much text is overwhelming for everyone, especially technical documents spanning dozens of pages. Create white space with formatting macros like dividers, cards, or columns, or display key facts in quotes to catch the readers' attention. Designer from MacroSuite comes highly recommended, as you can structure your pages from scratch with simple drag-and-drop tools or use a pre-built template.
Clear the chaos
You can use macros to break up long paragraphs or unsightly page links without losing any information. Customised buttons, tabs, footnotes, and tables of content make it much easier for users to find what they are looking for in Confluence.
Boosting visual impact
With Content Formatting Macros, you can make your Confluence pages more visually engaging by incorporating interactive elements such as cards, backgrounds, and buttons. Features like tabs and numbered headings make navigation easier and provide more structure. Progress bars and additional contextual information increase the informational value of the pages and ensure they are visually attractive and user-friendly. These macros help you transform dull pages into impressive content hubs that your team will enjoy using every day.
Use colour to liven up your pages
Sometimes it's unavoidable for pages to be text-heavy, but you can prevent them from appearing dull by adding colour accents, backgrounds, banners, or icons to break up the monotony. Just be careful not to use too many conflicting colours, as this can make your pages look cluttered. Pulse contains powerful visualisation tools and templates if you need a little inspiration.
Show, don't tell
Our brains can best process visual information (and retain visual information much longer). To engage your audience, you can use images and videos in backgrounds or banners or compile your more complex information into charts and infographics through chart or diagram macros.
Foster an emotional, personal connection
Use your macros to add emojis, GIFs, videos, or animations. You can also display social feeds, Google Maps, YouTube, and simple animations to foster a more personal connection with your teammates.
Additional tips
- Always start out with templates. If you are new to Confluence macros, templates are an efficient and easy way to get started and get the hang of creating pages. It provides a structure that really works. Once you've become more adept at using the tools, you can use a blank canvas.
- Use page layouts. They're the easiest way to structure your content, and you can always make changes or move things around later.
- Always use visuals wherever possible. Content is a lot more engaging when an image or graph is attached. Use wireframes, mock-ups, diagrams, or even stock photos from the library to make your content stand out.
- If you are an admin, you can see how often macros are used by going to General Configuration: Macro usage.
Confluence is an extremely useful tool if it's well-structured and engages its readers. If you want to get the most from your Confluence pages, you have to start using macros to revitalise your content.
Written by
Jarin McClinton
Global Head of Professional Services
With over 10 year's experience as a scrum master, solutions architect, and technical consultant, Jarin has intimate knowledge of how to solve complex business problems with technology. He oversees our global consultancy, delivering strategies that enhance customer satisfaction and drive growth.
Atlassian
Work management