Home
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.
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.
Next steps
To complete migration, you must first perform several post-migration steps that depend on how Portal is being used. After completing the post-migration steps, review the Enabling new functionality section to take advantage of the new tools available in HCL Digital Experience 8.5. Enabling new functionality should not be started until all post-migration steps have been completed.
Enabling new functionality in a migrated portal
The migration process collects configuration data and applications from an earlier installed version of HCL Digital Experience and merges them into the newer installed version so that the new environment is identical to the earlier environment. Taking advantage of new functionality that was not available in the earlier portal requires additional attention after migration is complete.
Enable new functions in migrated themes
When you migrate your themes, migration moves your existing themes to the new server. Migration does not upgrade themes from an earlier version to use new functions that are introduced in more recent versions of the product.

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.
    - Overview
      Migration is the process of collecting configuration data and applications from an earlier installed version of HCL Digital Experience and merging them into a newer installed version. So that the new environment is identical to the earlier environment. For the z/OS® platform, the new version must be on the same server as the earlier version. Migration to a different (remote) server is not supported.
    - Planning for migration
      Completing a thorough plan before migrating to the latest version of HCL Digital Experience has a direct impact in the effort invested during the actual migration. Become familiar with the environment you are migrating to (target environment). Also, make sure that the environment you are migrating from (source environment) is up to date with fixes and meets the requirements for migration.
    - Preparing your source environment
      Before you begin the steps for migration, you must perform some critical tasks on your source environment, such as creating back ups, installing the latest cumulative fix and one of the two most recent fix packs, and disabling automatic synchronization if you are migrating a cluster. Review the topics in this section, and perform the required tasks to ensure that your source environment remains functional and the migration completes successfully.
    - Setting up the target environment
      The migration requires you to install the required Portal and WebSphere® binary installations. To prepare your target environment, ensure that you have applied the latest cumulative fix and the most recent fix pack before you start migration. In addition, create new copies of the source databases for the target environment to use, and prepare the target environment for any custom applications that have dependencies or any other tasks that need to be performed for remote or cluster migrations.
    - Migrate data using the configuration wizard
      For Version 8.5, data, applications, databases, property files, security settings, and configuration are migrated using the Configuration Wizard. Use the roadmaps for cluster and stand-alone environments to guide you through the process.
    - Next steps
      To complete migration, you must first perform several post-migration steps that depend on how Portal is being used. After completing the post-migration steps, review the Enabling new functionality section to take advantage of the new tools available in HCL Digital Experience 8.5. Enabling new functionality should not be started until all post-migration steps have been completed.
      - Post-migration activities
        After you migrate to HCL Digital Experience 8.5, you need to complete extra tasks depending on how you customized the source portal environment and which components you used. First, complete the Applying the latest Combined Cumulative Fix updates task, then you can begin the post-migration tasks followed by enabling new functionality.
      - Enabling new functionality in a migrated portal
        The migration process collects configuration data and applications from an earlier installed version of HCL Digital Experience and merges them into the newer installed version so that the new environment is identical to the earlier environment. Taking advantage of new functionality that was not available in the earlier portal requires additional attention after migration is complete.
        New Web Content Manager features
        You might need to update your old web content to take advantage of the new Web Content Manager features.
        Migration: Enabling managed pages
        After migration, you must manually enable support for managed pages. Without managed pages support, some features like the project menu are not available on the migrated server.
        Changing from Ajax proxy to outbound HTTP connection
        HCL Digital Experience 8.5 provides a migration process for the change from the Ajax proxy of previous portal versions to the new outbound HTTP connection.
        Updating blog and wiki templates after migration
        Perform the following steps to manually update the blog and wiki templates after migration.
        Enabling the new tag and rating widgets after a portal upgrade
        If you upgrade your Portal from an earlier version to HCL Digital Experience 8.5 and want to use the new tag and rating widgets, you must first enable blogs and wikis. Then, complete the following task to ensure that tag and rating widgets are enabled.
        Moving hidden pages
        Portal scripts create hidden pages that can clutter the page topology, making it difficult for users to find the page they want, and also slow down portal performance. To clean up the page topology and ensure faster runtime performance, administrators can move these hidden pages to a different location after you complete the migration to HCL Digital Experience 8.5.
        Enable new functions in migrated themes
        When you migrate your themes, migration moves your existing themes to the new server. Migration does not upgrade themes from an earlier version to use new functions that are introduced in more recent versions of the product.
        Migrating themes
        When migrating themes that were developed in an earlier version, you must be aware of general guidelines, differences, and known issues.
        Device class support in a migrated theme
        You can use the new device classes and equation support to modify your themes from previous versions so they are more efficient.
        Removing the Portal 8.0 site toolbar from a Portal 8.0 theme
        To use the new site toolbar of HCL Digital Experience 8.5 within a Portal 8.0 theme, you must first remove the existing toolbar that comes with your Portal 8.0 theme.
        Add the HCL Portal 8.5 site toolbar to a Portal 8.0 theme
        You can easily add the modularized site toolbar of HCL Digital Experience 8.5 to a HCL Portal 8.0 theme. Or, you can add a toolbar to a custom theme that is derived from the HCL Portal 8.0 theme. The theme must be a modularized theme, which supports theme profiles and theme modules.
        Updating your theme to use simple context menus
        The theme context menu framework that is provided with the module wp_theme_menus in Portal 8.0 and earlier versions is relabeled and improved in HCL Digital Experience 8.5. The new Simple Menu Framework is compatible with all previous versions of the wp_theme_menus.
  - 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.

Enable new functions in migrated themes | HCL Digital Experience

When you migrate your themes, migration moves your existing themes to the new server. Migration does not upgrade themes from an earlier version to use new functions that are introduced in more recent versions of the product.

When migrating modular themes, the modular theme architecture makes it easy to enable new functions in your themes by turning on and off the modules or versions of the modules. For example, if you want to update your theme to use the current version of Dojo, replace the dojoxx.json file in the capabilities folder, where xx is the version number. Your Dojo meta-modules load the newer version of Dojo as specified in the dojoxx.json file.

HCL Digital Experience provides an optimized, modular theme architecture from Version 7.0.0.2 onward. Non-modular Version 6.1, such as Portal, PortalWeb2, and Tab Menu - Page Builder themes were deprecated in Version 8.0 and are no longer supported in Version 8.5.

Non-modular version 7.0 (Page Builder) themes are still supported on version 8.5 but are also deprecated and will be unsupported in the next version of HCL Digital Experience. It is either required (6.1 themes) or recommended (7.0 themes) that you upgrade to a modular theme. If you are starting a new project, you must start with a copy of the 8.5 theme. If you must migrate a previous project, the older non-modular themes can physically be migrated. But, you must then manually update your themes to the modular architecture, which allows you to enable any new features.