Make a space public with anonymous access

Giving anonymous users access to your space lets you share the content in it externally with anyone who might need it, inside or outside your organization.

To learn more about anonymous access, what exactly an anonymous user is, what happens when anonymous users have access to your site, and how to enable it for your site, see Share your site externally with anonymous access.

When would anonymous access be useful?

Using anonymous access to share externally is best when you want to share a lot of content with nonspecific people (aka, anyone on the internet).

Examples of this kind of content could be:

• a publicly available roadmap

• an open knowledge base

• support documentation

Decide what anonymous users can access

Anonymous access to content can be controlled at different levels:

• Site – At the site level (in global permissions), the Confluence admin or site admin decides whether to grant anonymous users any access to the site.

• Space – If anonymous access is allowed at the site level, it’s then up to the space admins to decide whether they want to grant anonymous users any access to their space. If space access is granted, then anonymous users will have access to all pages in the space, unless restricted on the pages themselves.

• Page – Anonymous users are restricted from viewing a page when a page’s access setting is Only specific people can view or edit. Or when one of its parent pages has been set so that only specific people can access, which means that view restriction inherits down to all of its nested pages.

Give anonymous users access to your space

Spaces have their own level of control for anonymous users that can be controlled independently of whatever access is granted at the site level. Unlike logged-in users who get access to everything unless manually restricted, anonymous users start with no access and must be manually given access.

Although space permissions can be granted to anonymous users at any time, anonymous access must be enabled at the site level for anonymous users to successfully access the space.

To give anonymous users space access:

1. Go to the space you want to make public.

2. Select Space settings.

3. In the Space permissions card, select Anonymous access.

4. Select Edit.

5. Check boxes under any of the available space permissions you want to give anonymous users.

   1. It’s recommended to only allow them the View permission. This will make space view-only for anonymous users.

6. Select Save.

Space admins can grant anonymous users all the same permissions as regular users, except anonymous users can’t be admins of a space. For a list of all space permissions that can be granted, see Assign space permissions.

If anonymous users are granted access to the space, they’ll have access to all content within the space. To restrict them from a page, you can either change its page restrictions or hide it from the page tree.

Restrict access to individual pages for anonymous users

If anonymous users are granted access to the space, they’ll have access to all content within the space. To restrict them from accessing a page, you can either change its page restrictions or hide it from the page tree.

To restrict anonymous users from accessing a page:

1. Open the Restrictions dialog by selecting the lock icon on the page.

2. Select Only specific people can view or edit in the dropdown (if not already selected). This step will remove access for everyone but you.

3. Add any licensed users and groups that should have access to the page.

4. Select Apply to save the changes. Now, only the people and groups listed in the dialog have access to the page.