Is there a flowchart for how to start Confluence development?

Confluence Development Confluence Cloud
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I’ve been looking at Confluence plugin/macro/marketplace/etc docs for a bit now and come to realize they’re all for different things…

Is there a flowchart for where I should be looking?

Say I want to make a macro that can be put on pages that creates a table and highlights some things in it…

  • I do believe it shouldn’t take the SDK to make it.
  • Nor does it seem to be a Forge project.
  • The Velocity based Macros seems right - but if I follow links around and sign up for a space, it says
  1. Go to > General Configuration > User Macros

Which doesn’t exist in the config, seemingly because I’m now on the cloud version, which doesn’t do User Macros… Maybe?

And that’s One example of wanting to just do something simple, I don’t want to imagine trying to make something more complex and finding a month in you’re on the wrong platform/SDK…
So, again, is there a flowchart for this?

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:wave: Welcome to the Developer community! You’ve definitely hit a nail on a head - it is confusing where to get started building… And, unfortunately, there isn’t a clear, easy answer right now. The short answer is, it depends on what you want to build. The flowchart I keep in my head is something like:

Server or Cloud?

  • If Server, definitely go ask for help because this isn’t my area of expertise :sweat:.
  • If Cloud…
    • Do you need to add UI of some sort inside of an Atlassian product?
      • If no, then a 3LO app is probably the way to go.
      • If yes, then Connect or Forge are the way to go.

But how do you decide when Connect or Forge is the right answer? Again, my go-to here is nuanced by my personal preference. I’m much more comfortable with the Forge platform, so I start down the path of understanding whether what I want to do can be done on Forge. It sounds like you did some of this as well with:

Can you expand on that a bit more?

The macro module allows you to fairly easily create a new macro. And UI Kit does have a support for some table stuff. I’m assuming there is more you want to do here?

If you want a lot more control, Connect also has support for Macros.

On your specific question about server vs cloud:

Yes, I’m lead to believe that this is a server-only thing.

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