• 10 hours
  • Medium

Free online content available in this course.

course.header.alt.is_video

course.header.alt.is_certifying

Got it!

Last updated on 9/9/24

Create a Confluence Site and Your First Wiki Pages

Popular Wiki Products

There are several wiki products out there that are worth considering, such as:

  • Confluence - developed by Atlassian, this is by far the most popular wiki.

  • Notion - a wiki with great design and free to use (until you reach a certain number).

Both are free for personal use. In the next chapters you’ll be learning how to create a wiki. To do this, you’ll need to create a Confluence or a Notion account. Let’s take a look at how to do this with Confluence right now.

Set Up Confluence

There are a few steps to creating a wiki with Confluence:

First, create an account on Confluence using this link

A screenshot of the Confluence sign-up page
The Confluence sign-up page

Then, enter your e-mail address and click on Sign up. You may receive a verification email: click on it if it has arrived.

A screenshot of the sign-up process for getting started with Confluence
Enter your email to sign-up, or continue with another account

Congratulations, you’ve created your account! Now, let’s look at how to create a space called Product. Spaces are areas you can create in Confluence for specific purposes. For example, you would store marketing documentation in the marketing space and product documentation in the product space.

a screenshot showing that you can create work spaces in the Overview section which offers to View all spaces or to Create a space.
You can create spaces here!

Next, you can name your new space.

Screenshot showing that you can personalize your space by adding details such as a Name of the space, and defining permissions. There are alos additional options for personalizing the page.
Add details about your new space

And finally, here’s where you can create your first wiki page!

In the Create tab, you are able to create your first wiki page in Confluence.
Create your first wiki page in Confluence

Create Your First Wiki Page

Let's go back to an example from a previous chapter:

  1. We decided to look at a feature (called a quiz). 

  2. We went through a process to write 14 user stories for this quiz feature.

  3. We then wrote acceptance tests for some of these user stories.

Now, let's use a Confluence wiki to store this information so the team can access it:

  1. Create a wiki page for the quiz feature. 

  2. Create 14 user story pages.

  3. On the Quiz page, write down the user stories and add a link to each individual user story page.

  4. Add the acceptance tests (that belong to a given user story) on that user story's page. 

Create a Feature Page for the Quizzes

Let's begin by creating the following sections on the quiz feature page and then fill them in. To create sections you can use Headings. I’m using Headings 2. 

First, create the following sections:

  • Quiz Feature 

  • Background

  • Screenshot

  • User Stories

  • Links

The quiz feature is the page title, Background, Screenshot, User Stories and Links are Sections.
Create sections on your page using headings

Next, add a general text description of the feature to the Background section. This is a good place to write a few sentences about the context and explain briefly what the feature is and what you need to do.

A screenshot of a background section that adds some general context
A background section adds some general context

A picture can tell a thousand words, so we’ll put one or two images in the screenshots section.

With the image prompt you can add an image, a video or a file.
Adding a screenshot with the image prompt
A screenshot of adding a screenshot with the image button in the toolbar
Adding a screenshot with the image button in the toolbar

The next step is to create a table in the user story section. We’ll add one user story per row and four columns for the ID, User Story, Link and Status.

You can add  a column to the left or the right, for example, you can also change the color or clear the cells.
Add a table using the "+" button at the top of your wiki page

The tables are quite similar to tables in Word or Google Doc. You can add rows and columns by clicking above the column as shown in the screenshot. You can also add a title to the table if you'd like.

A screenshot of adding columns to the table
Adding columns or rows to the table

When you've finished filling in your user stories the end result should look something like this:

We see four columns : ID, User stories, Links and Status. The first line reads QZ01 As a teacher I want to create a quiz so that I can add questions and save them without publishing. Link is blank, status is backlog.
A table with some user stories

The user stories section is the most important, especially the link to each individual story's wiki page.

For corporate or product documentation, there are typically some existing related wiki pages that may be useful to link to. Use the shortcut CMD+K or write “/link” to insert a link. You can even add a section for links so that you can add references and related material.

A screenshot of adding links to a wiki
Adding links to your wiki

And that’s it! We have the bare bones of a wiki page. Ready to try it out on your own?

Your Turn!

You’re going to create your own Confluence page showing user stories about the pass/fail logic of the quiz. We’ve already taken a look at this in the first part of the course, but if you need another look you’ll find the user stories here. Use the steps we saw in this chapter to add the information to your wiki:

  • First, create your  sections 

  • Add a background section and fill in the context

  • Format the text into Heading 1, Heading 2, paragraph, etc. 

  • Create tables to present information (put your user stories into a table).

  • Insert images (for example screenshots of the quiz…)

  • You can even store all relevant documentation including Microsoft PowerPoint slides, Microsoft Word/Excel documents, or PDF documents all in one central place - your wiki! 

Have you finished? Check your work here

Let’s Recap!

  • Wikis are a great tool to help the team achieve better transparency and understanding of their work.

  • Confluence and Notion are very popular wiki platforms in use by many organizations.

  • Wikis are a good way to help document your work.

Now that you have created your own wikis, you're ready to create the perfect user stories. So let’s get to it in the next chapter!

Ever considered an OpenClassrooms diploma?
  • Up to 100% of your training program funded
  • Flexible start date
  • Career-focused projects
  • Individual mentoring
Find the training program and funding option that suits you best
Example of certificate of achievement
Example of certificate of achievement