Is it possible remove the 'Blog' tab from the overview page in Confluence and/or is there a way to hide the 'Create blog post' button from anonymous users?

[CJ]

We use Confluence Cloud and one of our spaces allows anonymous, read only access. Since the release of the new overview page (in January 2017, I think?), we have three tabs on the home page:

• Overview
• Pages
• Blog

Is there a way to remove or hide the 'Blog' tab?  I would like to do this because our space doesn't have any blogs and, yet, with anonymous access it looks like this:

image2017-2-1 13:5:26.png

We use this space for public help documentation, so it's not really appropriate for people who visit the site and don't have a Confluence log in to be given the option to add a blog and, furthermore, we just don't want to draw attention our lack of blogs   

If it's not possible to remove the 'Blog' tab, then is anyone aware of another workaround? e.g. Is there another space template that's better to use for anonymous access or could I change the home page to be something other than the tabbed Overview?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[CJ · Accepted solution]

For the record, this question is no longer relevant for Confluence Cloud because space overview pages no longer have the 'Blog' tab that prompted the question. The 'tabs' are different from the side bar, which at the time, was also not customisable, however this is now possible, as noted in the help docs.

[Maarten Arts]

Hi CJ,

I don't have access to the new overview page myself, but in the old 'sidebar view' it is possible to hide Blogs. In the old view you can navigate to Space tools > Configure sidebar and then remove any element you don't want to see.

Maybe there is a similar option in the Space tools menu you have at the top-right of the page?

Here is what it looks like in the old view:

image2017-2-2 10:36:52.png

image2017-2-2 10:36:34.png

Edit: Were you able to enable to new overview page somewhere? I've been looking for a setting to change from the old overview to the new overview, but I can't find it anywhere.

[Deleted user]

Resolution;

If you click the Pen to edit at the bottom of the side bar you can then remove the Blog and/or the Overview.

[CJ]

Thanks Keiran :-)

I think my original question is actually no longer relevant because it was actually about features and changes on the space overview page that either don't seem to exist any more or have been changed again (at the time I don't think it was possible to edit the sidebar either, so you are correct that it is now possible to do so).

[Gareth Jones]

Looks like this is still an issue almost a year later unless I'm missing something? Is there honestly still no way to remove 'Blogs' from the overview page?

[Jeff Hussey]

It's laughable that this is marked "Resolved" but there's still no instructions on how to remove Blog.

Like others on this thread, I'm not happy with the new interface. Seems like a lot of customization has been removed and the site is considerably less flexible than it used to be. Add to this the general unresponsiveness from the company and you can easily say I'm not at all happy with the direction Confluence or Atlassian is taking these days. We're actively looking for another solution.

[CJ]

Hi Penny,

I sympathise!

Support told me that "It's currently expected that the Blog tab shows even if there's no blogs". So, my very clumsy workaround has been to make a blog, because that's better than the 'no blogs' message. Like you, it's also take us some time to adjust stuff in light of the other changes like the missing sidebar from the home page; but I guess we'll get used to it.

CJ

[Penny Redhead]

I also want to know how to remove 'blog' and (hopefully) customise the overview page tabs to add in custom options - like the previous 'sidebar' options.

I'd just been through every project/client space and configured landing pages and sidebar to customise options for clients - about a week before the interface changed. NOT HAPPY. All my clients are asking 'what is the blog and where have the other options gone?"

[CJ]

For the record, I got a reply from support:

It's currently expected that the Blog tab shows even if there's no blogs, though the Create button definitely shouldn't be showing. We've got an internal ticket already to get that fixed, though I'm not sure what the timeframe is on it arriving. 

[CJ]

Hi Maarten,

Thanks for your reply. I looked at the Space tools menu and can't find any options that look like they're for controlling the tabs on the overview page (although I may have missed it?). But I don't think I'd checked that before, so thanks for the suggestion.  It would be nice to configure the overview like you can configure the sidebar (or used to be able to, because I can't find 'Configure sidebar' now, I assume it was taken out when I got the overview?)

For my initial issue, I've put in a support request, as I suspect there might be a bug. i.e. users that don't have 'Create' permissions can't see the 'create' page button, so they shouldn't be able to see a 'create blog' button either (for the record, I'll report back when I hear more).

For enabling the new overview page, I don't recall doing anything to change from the old to the new.  I think it appeared with the 9 January 2017 Cloud release:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/what-s-new-686863216.html#What'sNew-confluence

(they say 'it will be there in the next few weeks, so perhaps we're in different groups?)

[Maarten Arts]

As I don't have access to the new overview yet, I don't have a clue as to what you can or cannot do. Your best bet would be to ask in the support request since it is related and you already started one. 

In the link you posted, there is a note about sidebar customization "Space tools has moved to the top right corner of your space home, and sidebar customizations are still supported, but can only be added in as custom content using wiki markup.", which makes it sound like it is still possible.

Create page and create blog are two separate permissions by the way. When you navigate to Administration and then Space Permissions, you can define the permissions per space. It is possible to allow Blog creation and disallow Page creation here.

[CJ]

Thanks Martin,  I guess I'll see what answers I get in my support request.

When it arrives, I hope you have more luck with the new Overview page than I've had!