Performance tips

Create sites for different use cases

In version 6.0 of Refined for Confluence Data Center we introduced sites, making it possible to use content from one Confluence instance in several sites built on top of the instance. This opens op a whole range of new use cases for Confluence, such as intranets, knowledge bases, and documentation. It also improves performance for large/enterprise instances: as the content is divided into smaller chunks, it’s faster to fetch and render.

Collapse subcategories

Refined renders the category menu based on what the user is allowed to view. So when you have a high amount of categories, it may take a long time to calculate what to show in the menu. Collapsing subcategories helps you speed up this process.

When you enable the Collapse subcategories feature, Refined will render the top-level categories and allows the user to expand the categories they wish to explore. The spaces in the category are only fetched when the user decides to expand that category.

Head to the Refined Administration.
Click the Navigation tab.
Under the Category menu heading, enable Collapsed subcategories.

Cache management

When you have a large instance with many spaces or a lot of simultaneously active users, we recommend turning on the caching feature. This provides a number of benefits:

Fewer server requests.
Faster resource load times.
Great potential performance gain for large instances.
Smoother end user experience.
Always up-to-date.

A small cache object is made available in the beginning of each page load, checking if the cached resources are up to date or if the administrator has made any changes to the cache management settings. This way the resources are still kept updated at all times.

If a resource is cached, the user will read it locally without having to make any server requests. The resources are stored using the standardised Web Storage API, allowing for fast and efficient use across all major browsers. The cache system works with all supported browsers and versions. The cache management system is built with Web Storage.

Go to the Refined Administration.
Go to the Caching tab.
Select Enable caching.
Set up Cacheable resources.

Resource API	Description	Used by

Resource API	Description	Used by
Category REST API	Requests made for categories, the category menu, and all their content. Recommended to cache if your instance has categories containing a large amount of spaces and/or subcategories.	Categories, Spaces macro
Footer REST API	The footer and all of its content. If it is not cached, this resource will be fetched on all your site’s pages.	Footer
Global Menu REST API	The global menu, as well as the sidebar from Refined version 4.0. If it is not cached, this resource will be fetched on all your site’s pages.	Global menu
User Category REST API	All requests associated with the functionality of linking users to categories, including the roles defined for them.	Connecting Users to Categories and Spaces
Users REST API	User-related requests made by Refined’s user macros.	User Details macro, Users Macro

Manual category permissions

Speed up sites with an exceptionally high amount of spaces by manually assigning category permissions to user groups.

Because this approach involves manual work and upkeep, we only recommend it to customers whose Confluence instances have a complex structure, experience performance issues, or have users in many user groups.

When a user logs in, Refined calculates which categories should be visible. By default, users can view a category when they have permission to view a space inside the category. However, it is quicker to calculate this based on Manual Category Permissions than by iterating through all the spaces.

Refined always respects Confluence permission settings in spaces: a user that is not allowed to see a space will not see the space even if they can see the category above it. Similarly, hiding a category containing a space will not hide the space to a user. If the user has the space’s URL or searches for it on the site, it will still show up if the space settings allow it.

Head to the Refined Administration.
Click the Configuration tab.
Under the Category heading, enable Use manual category permission settings. Note that categories which were visible before might be hidden until you configure them.
Go to the Site Builder tab to configure them: categories that don’t have category permissions set up are marked with a red exclamation mark icon.
To set up permissions for a category, click its Cogwheel > Edit category.

Permission	Description

Permission	Description
Anonymous users	The category is visible to every user, regardless of whether they are logged in.
Logged-in user	The category is visible only to users who are logged in.
Groups	The category is visible only to users from the Confluence user groups that you specify here.
Inherit Only available on additional sites, not on the Global Site.	The category inherits the settings from the site. So if the site is set to Logged-in users, this category will also only be visible to users who are logged in. Note that this may result in categories being shown that do not contain any spaces.