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.
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.
HCL Portal
First, finish your HCL Digital Experience deployment with the Configuration Wizard. Then, you can configure your environment further. For example, you can tune your servers to improve performance. You can change the default context root.
Setting up and maintaining a portal farm
The term "farm" refers to a series of identically configured, stand-alone server instances. The stand-alone servers allow the farm to be increased or decreased without having to worry about complex cluster configurations or inter-server awareness. Server farms offer a simple way to build and maintain a highly scalable, highly available server environment. Creating the farm requires an established content subscriber, two or more installed instances of HCL Digital Experience, and a configured web server for load balancing. The farm documentation covers only the HTTP server plug-in. However, you can use any supported web server.
Maintaining a portal farm
Maintenance can be considered any change to the system, such as the deployment of application updates, platform configuration changes, or the application of corrective service. The mechanism used to apply maintenance to a farm depends on the type of farm deployed: unique installations or shared configuration.

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.
    - Configuration Wizard
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up stand-alone servers and new deployments, create clusters, migrate and update to new versions, and add new capabilities to existing deployments.
    - Setting up a stand-alone server
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up a stand-alone server. A stand-alone server is useful for different environments, such as a content authoring environment, test environment, and more.
    - Setting up a cluster
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up either a dynamic or static horizontal cluster.
    - Tune your environment
      HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment by default. Complete the steps in the Performance Tuning Guide to optimize performance.
    - Web servers
      HCL Digital Experience uses the internal HTTP transport within IBM WebSphere Application Server to handle requests. However, because WebSphere Application Server also supports the use of an external web server, you can access HCL Portal from your web server. You can use a local web server on the same server as HCL Portal or you can use a remote web server on a different server. A remote web server is typical for a production environment or other high-traffic configuration and is also typically placed in DMZ outside a firewall to protect portal ports.
    - HCL Portal
      First, finish your HCL Digital Experience deployment with the Configuration Wizard. Then, you can configure your environment further. For example, you can tune your servers to improve performance. You can change the default context root.
      - Configuring portal behavior
        Configure various options related to your portal.
      - Changing ports
        One can change the HCL Digital Experience port numbers assigned to DX Portal Server after installation.
      - Changing your site URL
        You can change your site URL during and after installation to create URLs that are more reflective of your site and easier to remember. If you entered a different value for the context root during installation, there are additional steps that must be performed to implement the new context root value in your site URL. If you decide to change your site URL after installation, you can use the Configuration Wizard to remove the context root and default home values (/wps/portal) from your site URL or to change these values. You can also use the Configuration Wizard to remove or add navigational state information to your URL.
      - Changing the portal URI after an installation
        You can change the default portal Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) any time after you install HCL Digital Experience. Some applications have a fixed context root that cannot be changed.
      - Configuring managed pages
        When you create a new installation of HCL Digital Experience 8.5, managed pages are enabled by default. However, you can also manually disable and enable the feature as needed.
      - Create an HCL Portal profile
        During the installation process, the IBM Installation Manager creates the HCL Portal profile. If you are on HCL Portal Version 8.5 without a Combined Cumulative Fix applied, then you can use this option in the Configuration Wizard to create an additional profile.
      - Remove an HCL Portal profile
        Use the Configuration Wizard to remove a portal profile.
      - Managing your HCL Portal environment
        After you install HCL Digital Experience, you can use the IBM Installation Manager function to manage your environment. The Installation Manager function consists of updating and modifying the environment. You can also uninstall or roll back the modifications you made to your environment.
      - Setting up and maintaining a portal farm
        The term "farm" refers to a series of identically configured, stand-alone server instances. The stand-alone servers allow the farm to be increased or decreased without having to worry about complex cluster configurations or inter-server awareness. Server farms offer a simple way to build and maintain a highly scalable, highly available server environment. Creating the farm requires an established content subscriber, two or more installed instances of HCL Digital Experience, and a configured web server for load balancing. The farm documentation covers only the HTTP server plug-in. However, you can use any supported web server.
        Choosing the type of portal farm to create
        There are two supported portal farm configurations that you can choose when setting up your portal farm. You can set up a unique installation where each farm has a unique installation or you can set up one instance that is shared between multiple farm instances.
        Setting up the HTTP server plug-in on a portal farm
        You can use a Web server to handle load balancing across your portal farm. This documentation is specific to the HTTP server but you can use any supported Web server.
        Administering a portal farm
        Because a farm is a series of independent server instances and not a cluster, specific procedures need to be followed to deploy updates to the farm that are different than when administering a cluster. Updates include any changes to the system, such as, but not limited to, using or deploying portlets, adding or changing portal pages, changing file system resources, and changing IBM WebSphere Application Server configurations. The procedures differ depending on the type of farm: unique installations or shared installations.
        Maintaining a portal farm
        Maintenance can be considered any change to the system, such as the deployment of application updates, platform configuration changes, or the application of corrective service. The mechanism used to apply maintenance to a farm depends on the type of farm deployed: unique installations or shared configuration.
        Applying maintenance to a unique portal farm configuration
        When the portal farm is a series of uniquely installed HCL Digital Experience instances, each installation acts as a totally independent instance from the other farm instances. The only thing in common between farm instances are the shareable database domains (customization and community data), which are typically not updated during maintenance operations.
        Applying maintenance to a shared configuration server farm
        If you are using a shared file system, changes made to the shared file system are visible to all farm instances instantaneously. If you are using a cloned file system, changes are visible after replication. The changes might not be activated until a portal or application instance is restarted. Such changes include IBM WebSphere Application Server configuration changes. These changes are made to the shared configuration profile or updates to shared Java resources, like JAR files in a shared library or a redeployed application. Change the Farm Master. The Farm Master is the only server that should have write access to the shared file system.
      - Configuring the IBM License Metric Tool | HCL Digital Experience
        IBM License Metric Tool monitors license compliance. It recognizes and monitors what product offerings and their versions, releases, and fix packs are installed and used on the system. It measures the processor value units (PVU) available to and used by these assets. The tool ensures compliance with IBM® subcapacity licensing requirements and to demonstrate good IT governance. Information about installed software is collected from monitored computers by an agent that can be deployed on a range of operating systems. It is stored on a central server in a DB2® database and can be accessed through pre-configured reports that are available from a web user interface.
      - Upgrading your existing product offering
        After your initial HCL Digital Experience installation, you can purchase a license for an upgraded product offering.
    - HCL Web Content Manager
      Set up a content server by installing HCL Web Content Manager in various deployments to provide robust and flexible environments for web content development and delivery. After you install the content server, more configuration steps must be completed according to the role that the server plays in your web content environment.
    - Syndication
      Use syndication to replicate web content library data from one server to another server. Syndication is based on a syndicator and subscriber relationship. The syndicator has the current data. The subscriber received the current data from the syndicator.
    - Database Management Systems
      Configure the connection between HCL Digital Experience and your database management system. The Database Transfer configuration option in the Configuration Wizard assigns users and permissions, creates databases, obtains support for database collation, and transfers your database.
    - User registry
      User information is stored in your user registry. You can enable LDAP referrals, configure HCL Digital Experience to use dynamic groups, update your user registry, or delete your user registry configurations.
    - Search
      You use Portal Search to search for text that is displayed in websites that are created by HCL Web Content Manager.
    - Document Conversion Services
      Document Conversion Services are used when you work with HCL Web Content Manager authoring, previewing, and search.
    - Setting up a remote spell checker
      Using a local spell checker is not supported. You cannot run spell checker on 64-bit systems. Instead, you must install and configure spell checker on a remote application server and access that server from the local HCL Portal server.
    - HCL Connections
      HCL Connections portlets give the HCL Digital Experience users access to more collaboration and social networking features such as activities, blogs, and bookmarks.
    - Reference: Configuration properties
      For your convenience, the properties files that are used to configure HCL Digital Experience are included in the product documentation. Information that is specified in the properties files is used to configure databases, LDAP integration, security, including external security managers, and more.
  - 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.

Maintaining a portal farm

Maintenance can be considered any change to the system, such as the deployment of application updates, platform configuration changes, or the application of corrective service. The mechanism used to apply maintenance to a farm depends on the type of farm deployed: unique installations or shared configuration.

About this task

Choose the appropriate farm type for your environment to apply maintenance procedures: