Looking for existing plugins? See the existing plugins and extensions written by the community in the Confluence Extensions space.

Confluence's plugin system allows users and developers to customise and extend Confluence.

A plugin is a bundle of code, resources and a special configuration file that can be dropped into a Confluence server to add new functionality, or change the behaviour of existing features.

  • Administrators can drop plugins into their Confluence server to add new functionality to the system.
  • Developers can write plugins for their own Confluence server, or share plugins with other Confluence users.

Some parts of Confluence are implemented entirely as plugins - for example all macros in Confluence 1.3 and later, even those included with the system, are written as plugins.

Plugins and Plugin Modules

Every plugin is made up of one or more plugin modules. A single plugin may do many things: a plugin module represents a single function of the plugin.

For example, a theme plugin will consist of a colour-scheme module to define the theme's colours, a number of layout modules to define the site's page layouts, and a theme module to combine those pieces together into a single theme.

Some plugins, such as the macro packs that come with Confluence, are just a collection of unrelated modules that just happen to be packaged together. Other plugins, such as theme plugins, have modules that work together to provide some orchestrated functionality.

Confluence Plugin Guide Contents

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