Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms .

Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024 . If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Problem

When embedding an external website within the Confluence page in an <iframe/>, the website doesn’t load and display below in iFrame

example.website.com refused to connect.

Environment

• Confluence Server and Data Center

Diagnostic Steps

• Create a Page in Confluence

• Embed the website in iFrame using the HTML Include macro. Reference: How to put an iFrame into Confluence

  <iframe src="https://example.website.com/" noborder="0" width="830" height="800" scrolling="yes" seamless></iframe>

• The Preview of the website fails with the error example.website.com refused to connect
• Review the console in the browser with Developer Tools (Ctrl+Shift+i)
• In the Developer Console of your browser, check the Network logs (where all request/respond flows are listed), please check X-Frame-Options in the response headers of the relevant request for the external website. If it is displayed as DENY , the page can't be displayed in a frame

Other than checking the network logs, the below URL can also be used to validate the X-Frame-Options header options on the WebServer-

• X-Frame-Options Header Test

Cause

As we can see from the X-Frame-Options - HTTP - MDN article:

DENY
The page cannot be displayed in a frame, regardless of the site attempting to do so.
.
.
If you specify DENY , not only will attempts to load the page in a frame fail when loaded from other sites, attempts to do so will fail when loaded from the same site.

Resolution

Unless the website owners change the X-Frame-Options header, the website cannot embed inside of an iframe element.