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What is a blacklisted space?

(since app version 5.0.0)

Although most Confluence spaces benefit from content lifecycle management, there are certain situations when it is better to blacklist spaces.

When you blacklist a space, it will not be:

  1. shown in the content quality statistics
  2. decorated with the app's user interface elements (e.g. the content status indicator)
  3. processed by jobs, therefore the pages it contains will be skipped during:
    1. page view tracking
    2. page expiration tracking
    3. page archiving

It essentially means that blacklisted spaces are ignored by the Better Content Archiving app. The app won't track the page views in the blacklisted spaces, either.

Which spaces should I blacklist?

You should blacklist the following types of spaces:

  • Irrelevant spaces: these are the spaces that should not be tracked because their status is not relevant. They include dead content (legacy garbage), never-changing content (static information), machine-generated content, and other content that would create unnecessary load on your server without creating real value for your users.
    Benefit: If you blacklist these spaces, it can make a big difference in terms of app performance, especially in large Confluence instances. Properly configuring the list of blacklisted spaces is an actual optimization possibility. It both reduces the clutter in the application interface (ex: irrelevant spaces not polluting the content quality statistics) and the load on your server.
  • Spaces with corrupt data: Confluence, other apps, custom scripts may sometimes create data that is considered corrupt. Examples of corrupt data:
    • pages with NULL update dates (should never happen!)
    • child pages with NULL parents (may happen when your Confluence index is broken!)
    • dead attachments (existing in the database, but deleted from the filesystem)
    The app is designed to tolerate most types of corrupt data and report that in the Confluence log, but it may fail in non-recoverable situations like broken parent-child relations.
    Benefit: If you find a space with corrupt data and blacklist that temporarily, your users can use the app in all other spaces until the data gets fixed.

Manage blacklisted spaces

By default, the list of blacklisted spaces is empty, meaning that the content lifecycle management is active in all spaces.

You can add spaces to and remove spaces from the list at Confluence AdministrationArchivingBlacklisted Spaces.

Questions?

Ask us any time.