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HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
HCL Digital Experience 8.5
Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
Content Template Catalog 4.4
The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.
Customizing sites built with Content Template
When you customize Content Template Catalog components, you make your website unique, with its own style, user interface, and authoring environment.
Customizing component designs
Content Template Catalog components are copied into your design library, modified, and then used in page component configurations and portlets. Otherwise, updates to Content Template overwrites changes.
Customizing block components
When new components are required for the page that are not lists, use the Block pattern instead.

HCL Digital Experience Product Documentation
Welcome to the product documentation for HCL Digital Experience. Find information about how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend solutions.
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5
- HCL Digital Experience 9.5 [Legacy Content]
- HCL Digital Experience 9.0
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 9.0 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
- HCL Digital Experience 8.5
  Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
  - Overview
    HCL Digital Experience (formerly IBM WebSphere Portal and IBM Web Content Manager) empowers you to create, manage, and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to virtually all audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications, and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile. and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).
  - Roadmaps to deploy your system
    Review the roadmaps to understand the common deployment, configuration, migration, and integration patterns.
  - Roadmaps to create your website
    Review the roadmaps to understand how to create your website.
  - Online Help
    This Online Help is made available in the HCL Digital Experience Help Center for quick references on how to install, configure, maintain, and use HCL Digital Experience.
  - Installing
    HCL Digital Experience provides flexible deployment options that range from proof-of-concept where you can examine and test functionality to a highly available and scalable production environment. Review the planning information to learn more about hardware and software requirements, high availability, scalability, supported topologies, and much more. Select your operating system and then select the installation pattern that most reflects your business needs.
  - Configuring
    Run the following tasks after you install and deploy HCL Digital Experience. They address tasks that are typically run one time and have a global effect. Some configuration changes are made more frequently or do not have a global effect. These tasks are addressed in the Administering section.
  - Backup and restore
    Backup and recovery of data files and databases is an essential operation for any business system, particularly for data and applications that run in production environments. Create and follow a plan for backing up and recovering data on all tiers of your HCL Digital Experience deployment. IBM Installation Manager must also be included in backup and recovery planning. If you back up the HCL Portal file structure and then install a fix pack, your HCL Digital Experience and IBM Installation Manager become out of sync after you restore the HCL Portal file system. This condition is not recoverable.
  - Migrating
    Successful migration requires significant planning and preparation, understanding the tools that are involved, and careful execution of the appropriate steps in the order provided.
  - Integrating
    Integrate HCL Digital Experience with software such as HCL Sametime to enable your users to collaborate more easily. You can also use the unified task list portlet to integrate HCL with your backend business process software, such as IBM Process Server.
  - Administering
    Use the administration tools that are provided with the portal to do various day-to-day administration tasks. There are two methods for editing portal setup: using the administration portlets or the XML configuration interface. The administration portlets are a convenient way to make real-time updates to the portal's configuration. While the XML configuration interface is suited to more advanced administration, including batch processing of updates.
  - Securing
    Security tasks include setting up property extension databases and custom user repositories, configuring and activating SSL, and configuring authentication. In addition, tasks such as activating Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and NIST SP800-131a security modules and configuring external security managers such as Security Access Manager might be required to secure your portal environment.
  - Monitoring
    HCL Portal includes tools and features to help you monitor the portal site.
  - Setting up a website
    Setting up a website includes, creating pages, adding navigation, setting up search, and adding content to the site. Themes are used to customize the portal's look-and-feel. Out-of-the-box templates and the site wizard can help you set up your portal site faster. You can add wikis and blogs to your site and let users tag and rate content on your site.
  - Staging to production
    During portal solution development, the solution is initially developed, tested, and refined on one server or a limited number of servers. The solution is deployed later on live systems, referred to as the production environment. The process of moving the solution from the development environment to the production environment is called staging.
  - Developing
    This section includes developer documentation on extending applications and development assets for HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager.
  - Troubleshooting
    This section helps you resolve problems, use diagnostic tools and tracing to capture HCL Digital Experience system errors.
  - Reference
    View information that can help you use the Digital Experience Help Center including directory conventions, terms of use, trademarks, a glossary, and more.
  - Glossary
    This glossary includes terms and definitions for HCL Digital Experience.
  - Content Template Catalog 4.4
    The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.
    - Content Template overview
      You can use Content Template Catalog to mock up a site quickly or to build the skeleton of a site as a basis for further development. By using the templating patterns that Content Template Catalog is built on, you can supply a customized system for your users that lets them build their own sites. Content Template 4.4 requires HCL Digital Experience 8.5 with CF08 or higher installed.
    - Roadmaps for Content Template Catalog
      These roadmaps are designed to help you get started with Content Template Catalog.
    - Planning to use Content Template
      You must install Content Template Catalog on all servers you plan to use to develop, demonstrate, manage, or deliver a site that uses Content Template page templates and portlets.
    - First-time installation of Content Template
      The Content Template Catalog is installed with everything you need to build a site. You can also install the demonstration site to learn from seeing the design of a working site.
    - Upgrade and Migration of Content Template
      Content Template Catalog 4.4 is an update to Content Template 4.3, 4.2, 4.1.x, 4.0, and 3.x. When installed on an existing system, the newer version updates existing assets and installs new assets.
    - Customizing sites built with Content Template
      When you customize Content Template Catalog components, you make your website unique, with its own style, user interface, and authoring environment.
      - Customizing the theme for Content Template sites
        Create a customized theme to make the website unique.
      - Customizing layouts
        To change the page width or column widths, you change the stylesheet. To add extra layouts, for example to further split up the main column, or to add columns into the other areas of the page, create extra layouts.
      - Adding or removing the CTC modules in profiles
        To allow site designers to create pages by using the Content Template page template without having to use the CTC Content profile, run the following task to add the CTC modules to all of the Portal default profiles. There is also a task to remove the CTC modules from the Portal theme profiles.
      - Providing text providers
        All of the authoring templates, presentation templates, workflows, components, and categories are set up to use a text provider for their titles and descriptions. The Authoring Templates also use the text provider for field labels and prompts.
      - Customizing component designs
        Content Template Catalog components are copied into your design library, modified, and then used in page component configurations and portlets. Otherwise, updates to Content Template overwrites changes.
        Customizing list components
        If a new query is required, you can write a new menu, rule, or navigator.
        Customizing block components
        When new components are required for the page that are not lists, use the Block pattern instead.
        Customizing headers and footers for block components
        You can create new headers or footers for your component configurations. These can then be selected in a Block item.
      - Overriding presentation templates
        To modify the presentation template of a Content Template Catalog content type, you can override a copy of the presentation template through a mapping in your top-level site area, or for a specific site area. The top-level site is usually the best place to make this override.
      - Modifying Content Template page templates
        The page templates in Content Template Catalog are pages that reference microsites in the CTC Content library and can be easily changed. You can customize the page with extra portlets by dropping portlets onto the page. If you want to modify the sample content or remove or add more content, you can edit the content in the microsite. The next time that a page is created from this template, the updated page layout, portlets, and content are copied with the new page.
      - Creating page templates
        You can turn any page into a page template by moving the page into the page templates area in Portal. Then move the accompanying content into the microsites area in CTC Content.
      - Creating pre-configured portlets
        When you install Content Template Catalog, the toolbar is enhanced with a new tab under "Applications" called "CTC Portlets", and new page components under the "Content" tab called "Teasers", "Lists", "Slideshows", "Carousels" and "Navigation".
      - Creating page component configuration types
        The page component configuration types in Content Template Catalog are useful in a wide variety of cases. This flexibility results in configuration types that might be more complex or contain more fields than your authors need. Creating customized page component configuration types allows you to reduce the number of fields or provide more validation for less technical authors.
      - Creating new content types
        The content types in Content Template Catalog are general enough to be used in most scenarios. However, you can add your own content types for specific purposes, such as tying into internal workflow processes, storing additional information like product codes, or representing highly structured content types.
      - Integrating your site with social media
        The Content Template Catalog templates provide sample integration with social media services, but you will typically replace these with a customized implementation.
      - Feeds
        Content Template Catalog implements a feed solution that uses HCL Web Content Manager querying components like menu components and personalization components. The feeds are served up as a content item through the HCL Web Content Manager servlet. They have a well-defined URL whose name you can control that remains static over time.
      - Print support
        The pages support printing through a print stylesheet that removes extraneous theme components and unfloats and unconstrains the main content column.
      - Tagging and rating for Content Template
        The HCL Digital Experience tagging and rating services are included in many of the Content Template Catalog templates. The services have only been modified with some style overrides to make them fit properly within the Content Template design.
    - How to deploy sites built with Content Template
      The templates in Content Template Catalog help you build a site, with all the necessary content types, templates, and components. Use these templates as a base for your site and then customize it to place the site into the business context of an organization.
    - How to apply the multilingual solution to Content Template sites
      The HCL Web Content Manager Multilingual Solution consists of patterns, tools, and plug-ins for creating and managing multi-language and multi-locale sites.
    - Assets contained in the Content Template
      This is a reference guide for the assets that are delivered with the Content Template.
    - Troubleshooting Content Template sites
      Use the tips in this section to troubleshoot a site that is built with Content Template Catalog templates.
    - How to remove Content Template
      The procedure for removing Content Template Catalog varies depending on which components you installed, if you installed it on virtual portals, and if you added your own pages or templates.

Customizing block components | HCL Digital Experience

When new components are required for the page that are not lists, use the Block pattern instead.

About this task

Consider these best practices when customizing block components:

Copying a similar block component is the easiest way to create a new one.
Content Template Catalog blocks render the header and footer components. This technique is used to render nothing if the block is empty. To render a block conditionally, put tests around the header and footer rendering to hide them if no content is available.
Content Template lists contain fragments for including the header and footer. You can use the same fragments in custom block components.