Confluence pages with too many direct pages

This insight checks whether any of your pages exceed the recommended number of direct child pages.

Although, for easier identification, we show parent pages with too many direct child pages, this problem affects the entire space. This is also known as page tree width and results in performance issues for the space, including including navigating around the page tree, viewing the space, and viewing and editing pages in the space. Experience for users is degraded, but that will also depend on the number of pages and their content.

What's the recommendation?

This requires an overall cleanup of your space and will probably be a team effort since our guardrail is set quite high. We recommend following best practices from the Confluence cleanup guide, including:

• Use Marketplace apps that help with cleanup and archiving

• Start moving away from this space by creating new spaces for teams or new projects

• Archive the space, or back it up as XML and delete it

• Divide the space, for example by main parent pages, and move it to smaller spaces

Review affected pages

When viewing this recommendation from the dashboard, select the Download page list.

The downloaded CSV file includes:

• Page URLs of affected pages

• Direct child page count for each page

Follow best practices for space maintenance

Pages with too many direct child pages is a problem that can't be fixed easily or just be a one-time effort. If you have a high number of such spaces, it might mean you need change your approach to creating and managing content, for example by:

• Assigning owners: Assign Confluence gardeners and owners who will do periodical cleanup and maintenance of specific areas of Confluence.

• Themed spaces: Divide your spaces into smaller ones used by specific teams or projects. 

• New spaces for new projects: Start moving away from large spaces and create new, smaller spaces whenever a new project comes in.

• Regular cleanup: Do periodical cleanup of inactive or stale content, with the help of Confluence analytics or Marketplace apps.

Confluence cleanup guide

For best practices and ideas on how to do an overall cleanup, see Confluence cleanup guide.

Confluence cleanup area

You can also find quick links to retention rules, analytics, or space archiving in Confluence by going to Administration > General configuration > Clean up.