XWiki is the most viable self-hosted Confluence DC replacement. Success depends on surviving XML export limits, macro gaps, link rewriting, and LDAP rights mapping.
Technical guide to migrating Confluence Data Center to XWiki. Covers the Migrator Pro, XML export limits, macro translation, LDAP permissions, and link rewriting.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
Version compatibility
The Migrator Pro works best with Confluence 7.x and 8.x XML exports. Confluence 9.x exports introduced schema changes that may cause parsing issues. Always test with a single space export before running a full migration.
Attachment bloat
Confluence XML exports serialize attachments inline as Base64-encoded data. A 1 GB space with 500 MB of attachments produces a ~1.7 GB XML file. For spaces with large binary attachments (PDFs, images, CAD files), consider extracting attachments separately and importing them into XWiki's attachment store directly.
Do not confuse backup guidance with migration guidance
Atlassian recommends native DB backups for production reliability, but XWiki's importer still wants Confluence XML packages as migration feedstock. That tension is why large Confluence DC to XWiki migrations often need staged exports, REST extraction, or custom packaging.
Treat internal links as data, not text
If your migration plan says "we'll fix broken links later," it is not a migration plan yet.
Run a macro audit before you start
In Confluence, go to Administration → Macro Usage to get a full list of macros used across your instance. XWiki has listed the most commonly used macros and their equivalents. For a full comparison, send them your list of macros and they will provide input on each one.
XWiki clustering has known limitations
If a node is down and events happen, these events won't be propagated to the node when it comes back up. Realtime editing doesn't work on a cluster before XWiki 17.10.1 — each node will create a different realtime session. The current workaround is to disable the Realtime feature.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Decide what content deserves to move before you plan how to move it.
Objective A content inventory with a keep/rewrite/retire decision on every article and an agreed URL strategy.
Keep these open
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Inventory all content in Confluence
Count articles, categories, attachments, images and embedded media, and pull page views and last-updated dates for each article. Usage data is what makes the next decision defensible rather than political.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Make a keep, rewrite or retire call on every article
Most knowledge bases are half stale. Migrating everything imports the staleness and doubles the work; use views and last-updated to triage, and get the owning team to confirm. This usually removes 30-50% of scope.
Migrating stale content is the most common knowledge-base migration mistake — it costs effort and actively degrades the new site.
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Agree the URL and redirect strategy
Decide the XWiki URL structure and whether you can serve 301 redirects from the old paths. Public help centres carry real search traffic and inbound links; losing it is a measurable commercial impact.
Without 301 redirects from old article URLs you lose accumulated search ranking and every external link and bookmark breaks.
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Map the information architecture
Document the current category tree and design the target one, checking whether XWiki supports your nesting depth. Deeply nested hierarchies frequently have to be flattened, which changes navigation for everyone.
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Confirm permissions, audiences and localisation scope
Establish which content is public, internal or restricted, and how XWiki models that. Then confirm how many locales you have and whether translation relationships between articles survive the move.
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Build page-title and page-ID link mappings before import
This is the step most teams skip and most regret.
Confluence → XWiki specifics
- Expect some workflows to be redesigned, not translated
- Comala, Scroll Versions, and Jira-heavy pages need new approaches, not 1:1 ports.
Don't move on until
- Full content inventory with page views and last-updated dates
- Keep / rewrite / retire decision recorded per article
- URL and redirect strategy agreed with whoever owns SEO
02 Data Audit Audit the markup, the links and the assets — that is where KB migrations break.
Objective A content export with markup, internal links and every embedded asset accounted for.
Keep these open
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Export content and assess markup fidelity
Export articles in the richest format available and inspect what survived: tables, code blocks, callouts, nested lists, anchors and embedded video. Rich formatting is where fidelity is lost, and it is lost quietly.
HTML-to-Markdown conversion routinely mangles nested lists, tables and code blocks. Inspect the output rather than trusting the converter.
Data Profiler Profile the Confluence export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Inventory every internal link and cross-reference
Extract all internal links, anchor links and article cross-references. These break by default: the target URL structure differs, so every internal link needs rewriting as part of the load, not afterwards.
Internal links left pointing at old URLs turn the new knowledge base into a maze of 404s on day one.
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Inventory images, attachments and embedded media
List every asset with its URL, size and type, and confirm each still resolves. Assets hosted on the old platform's CDN will 404 the moment you decommission it, so they must be rehosted, not referenced.
Images referenced from the source platform's CDN break when the old account closes. Download and rehost every asset.
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Find and fix broken links and orphans
Crawl for existing broken internal and external links, and find articles no category links to. Fix them before migrating — a migration is a bad time to discover pre-existing rot.
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Check for PII and internal information in public content
Scan for customer names, internal hostnames, credentials in code samples and screenshots containing real data. Republishing these on a public help centre is a disclosure, and screenshots are the usual culprit.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Normalise metadata
Standardise authors, tags, timestamps to UTC, and locale codes. Author mapping needs a decision for people who have left — attribution to a deleted user usually fails the import.
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Inventory every macro and plugin before export
Use Confluence's Macro Usage report. Classify each into supported, partial, and redesign-required.
Don't move on until
- Content exported with markup fidelity assessed
- Every internal link and asset reference inventoried
- Broken links and missing assets fixed or logged
03 Field Mapping Map structure, metadata, permissions and — above all — URLs.
Objective A mapping covering article fields, taxonomy, permissions and a complete old-to-new URL map.
Keep these open
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Map the article schema
Map title, body, excerpt, author, dates, status, tags, SEO metadata and any custom properties. Confirm which fields XWiki lets you set on import versus which it computes — computed dates are a common surprise.
Schema Mapper Match Confluence fields to XWiki by uploading both schemas -
Map the taxonomy and hierarchy
Map categories, sections and tags to the target structure, resolving any nesting-depth limit explicitly. If you must flatten, decide how the lost level is preserved — usually as a tag or a title prefix.
JSON to CSV Converter Flatten nested API responses into a reviewable sheet -
Map permissions and audience segmentation
Map public, logged-in, and role-restricted visibility to XWiki's model. Verify the mapping deliberately: internal content accidentally published publicly is the highest-severity failure in this whole category.
Permission mapping errors publish internal documentation to the open web. Verify visibility on every restricted article after load.
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Build the complete old-to-new URL map
Produce a row per article mapping the old URL to the new one, then confirm exactly where the 301s will be served — XWiki, a CDN, or your own web layer. Without this artifact the redirect step cannot be executed at all.
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Define the markup conversion and link-rewrite rules
Specify how each markup construct converts and how internal links are rewritten using the URL map. Write it as a repeatable transform, not manual edits — you will run it more than once.
Data Format Converter Reshape the export into the format XWiki's importer expects -
Plan localisation and freeze the spec
Confirm how translated articles link to their source language in XWiki, then version and sign off the mapping spec.
Don't move on until
- Article schema and taxonomy mapped
- Permission and audience model mapped to target equivalents
- Complete URL map produced and redirect method confirmed
04 Test Migration Pilot the hardest articles, then read them.
Objective A pilot load whose formatting, links, assets and search all hold up under human review.
Keep these open
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Configure XWiki with the agreed structure
Create the category tree, permission groups, locales and branding before loading. Articles loaded before their categories exist land uncategorised and have to be moved by hand.
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Pick the most difficult articles as the pilot
Choose 20-50 articles for difficulty: the longest, the most heavily formatted, ones with tables and code blocks, deep internal linking, many images, embedded video, restricted visibility, and non-Latin scripts. Easy articles prove nothing.
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Run the conversion and load with link rewriting
Apply the markup conversion, rewrite internal links from the URL map, upload and re-reference assets, then load. Log every conversion warning rather than suppressing it.
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Read every pilot article side by side
Open source and target together and compare rendering. This step is manual on purpose: no automated check catches a table that collapsed into a paragraph or a code block that lost its indentation.
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Click every link and load every asset
Verify each internal link resolves, each image loads from the new host, each attachment downloads and each embed plays. Assets still served from the old CDN are the defect that surfaces only after decommissioning.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Test search and permissions
Search for known terms and confirm the right articles rank, then verify every restricted pilot article is invisible to an anonymous browser. Test permissions from a logged-out session, not an admin one.
Confluence → XWiki specifics
- Proof-import one or two representative spaces first
- Don't start with the biggest space. Pick one that exercises your most common macros and page structures.
- Reconnect LDAP/AD before rights testing
- Identity must be in place before you can validate permissions.
Don't move on until
- Complex articles render correctly with formatting intact
- Every internal link and asset in the pilot resolves
- Search returns sensible results for the pilot content
05 Cutover Publish, redirect, and keep the search traffic.
Objective All in-scope content live in XWiki with redirects serving and search engines informed.
Keep these open
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Load the full content set ahead of the switch
Run the full conversion and load into XWiki, unpublished or on a staging domain. Content migration differs from data migration here: you can stage the whole thing before anyone sees it.
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Publish the runbook with the redirect step first-class
Sequence the freeze, final delta, publish, redirect activation, sitemap submission and link updates, with owners for each. Redirect activation is the step with lasting commercial consequences, so it gets explicit ownership.
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Freeze editing and migrate the delta
Stop editing in Confluence, then convert and load anything changed since the full load. Announce the freeze to every team that publishes — content teams are used to editing whenever they like.
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Publish and verify permissions live
Publish the content set, then immediately verify restricted articles are not publicly reachable using an anonymous session. Do this before announcing the new site, not after.
Verify restricted content from a logged-out browser. An admin session will show you everything and tell you nothing.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Activate 301 redirects and submit the sitemap
Turn on the redirects from the URL map, then spot-check a sample of high-traffic old URLs and confirm each returns 301 to the right article. Submit the new sitemap and keep the old one reachable until search engines have recrawled.
Redirect chains and redirect loops both leak ranking. Verify each redirect resolves in a single hop.
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Repoint in-product and support links
Update help links embedded in your product, in support macros, in email templates and in onboarding material. These are the links your existing customers actually use, and they are easy to forget.
Don't move on until
- All content loaded, categorised and correctly permissioned
- 301 redirects live and verified from a sample of old URLs
- Sitemap submitted and support links repointed
06 Validation Watch traffic, links and search rankings for weeks, not hours.
Objective Verified content completeness, healthy redirects, and search traffic recovered to baseline.
Keep these open
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Reconcile content counts and assets
Compare article counts by category and status, plus asset counts, against source. Confirm every article in the keep list is present and every retired one genuinely is not.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Confluence and XWiki record-for-record -
Crawl the new site for broken links and assets
Run a full crawl for 404s, broken images and missing attachments, and fix everything it finds. Repeat the crawl after the fixes rather than assuming they worked.
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Verify the redirects at scale
Test every mapped old URL for a single-hop 301 to the right destination. Chains and loops both leak ranking and are invisible unless you check the whole map, not a sample.
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Monitor organic traffic and rankings for four to eight weeks
Track organic sessions, impressions and rankings for your top articles against baseline. A dip in the first two weeks is normal; one that has not recovered by week six is a redirect or indexing problem to investigate.
Do not decommission the old platform until search traffic has recovered — you may still need the old URLs to diagnose a ranking loss.
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Verify search, permissions and feedback loops
Confirm on-site search returns good results for real queries, re-verify restricted content from a logged-out session, and check article feedback and analytics are collecting.
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Sign off and decommission on a delay
Get acceptance against the Discovery criteria, keep Confluence available read-only until traffic has recovered, take a final export, and only then close the account.
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Validate restricted pages with real users, not admin accounts
Admin accounts bypass most permission checks. Test with users from each role.
Confluence → XWiki specifics
- Jira macros
- any {jira} or {jiraissues} macro content renders as an unknown macro in XWiki. The migrator does not automatically convert jira-key or jira-jqlQuery.
- Status macros
- Confluence's colored status labels have no native XWiki equivalent and require custom CSS or a bridge macro.
- Deep table formatting
- complex merged cells and colored rows may lose styling.
- Lucidchart
- No possibility to display Lucidchart diagrams after the Confluence migration — renders as "Unknown macro: lucidchart-onprem".
Don't move on until
- Article counts reconciled and no broken links remain
- Redirects returning 301 with no chains or loops
- Organic traffic recovered to within tolerance of baseline
What breaks
Known failure modes. Have a recovery plan for each before you cut over.
Jira macros
— any {jira} or {jiraissues} macro content renders as an unknown macro in XWiki. The migrator does not automatically convert jira-key or jira-jqlQuery.
Status macros
— Confluence's colored status labels have no native XWiki equivalent and require custom CSS or a bridge macro.
Deep table formatting
— complex merged cells and colored rows may lose styling.
Lucidchart
— No possibility to display Lucidchart diagrams after the Confluence migration — renders as "Unknown macro: lucidchart-onprem".
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
Does XWiki have a native Confluence importer?
Yes. XWiki offers a free community Confluence Migrator for testing and a paid Confluence Migrator Pro (included with Business/Enterprise subscriptions) that supports multi-space import, user mapping, permission migration, and batch processing. Both consume Confluence XML export packages. Page history is preserved, but attachment history is not preserved yet.
What breaks when migrating from Confluence to XWiki?
Complex Marketplace app macros (Jira, Lucidchart, Table Filter), status macros, deep table formatting with merged cells, and internal page links all require manual attention. Confluence has fine-grained permissions (EXPORTSPACE, REMOVEMAIL, etc.) that have no XWiki equivalent. draw.io and Gliffy diagrams migrate via bridge macros but need the XWiki Diagram extension for full editability.
Why does the Confluence XML export fail with OutOfMemoryError?
Confluence XML exports serialize all content and Base64-encode attachments into a single in-memory structure. For large spaces (5,000+ pages or multi-GB attachments), this exceeds JVM heap limits. Atlassian's official recommendation is to disable XML backups for large instances and use native database SQL dumps instead.
Can I use the same LDAP/AD setup for XWiki that I use for Confluence?
Yes. XWiki's LDAP Authenticator extension supports both OpenLDAP and Microsoft Active Directory. You point XWiki at the same directory server, configure group synchronization, and users authenticate on first login. XWiki also supports SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect, and Keycloak for SSO — without per-user fees.
When is Confluence Data Center end of life?
Confluence Data Center reaches end of life on March 28, 2029. New DC licenses stop being sold to new customers on March 30, 2026. Atlassian implemented significant price increases on February 17, 2026, for Data Center products to encourage the move to Cloud.