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.
Roadmaps to deploy your system
Review the roadmaps to understand the common deployment, configuration, migration, and integration patterns.
Roadmaps for installation and deployment
Installation and deployment roadmaps are designed for different environments, such as a development or authoring environment. The environment reflects how the server configuration is used. Under each environment is a topology. The topology describes how the server and other elements are arranged. Each roadmap includes a topology and high-level instructions for setting up the selected environment.
Roadmaps for stand-alone servers
A stand-alone server topology is useful for many environments. While the underlying topology is similar for many environments, the configuration steps to achieve a desired environment varies.

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 for installation and deployment
      Installation and deployment roadmaps are designed for different environments, such as a development or authoring environment. The environment reflects how the server configuration is used. Under each environment is a topology. The topology describes how the server and other elements are arranged. Each roadmap includes a topology and high-level instructions for setting up the selected environment.
      - Roadmaps for stand-alone servers
        A stand-alone server topology is useful for many environments. While the underlying topology is similar for many environments, the configuration steps to achieve a desired environment varies.
        Roadmap: Demonstration environment
        This roadmap is ideal for running product, feature, and application demonstrations. After the installation, you have an Apache Derby database and a default file-based repository. You might not need to make any additional changes to your demonstration environment. If you need to demonstrate a specific database or user registry, use the Stand-alone server roadmap.
        Roadmap: Portlet and theme development environment
        A portlet and theme development server is ideal to develop and test portlets and themes.
        Roadmap: Test or small production environment
        A stand-alone server topology is ideal for a test or small production environment. In this roadmap, the web server, database, and user registry software are distributed to different physical servers.
        Roadmap: Failover environment
        Set up your HCL Digital Experience environment as an idle standby configuration for failover. Your idle standby cluster server is not operational to service user transactions or to query workloads. The idle standby cluster server becomes active only if the primary node fails.
      - Roadmaps for container-based deployment
        A container-based deployment offers the capability to place them on different physical or virtual machines, on premises or in the cloud. This flexibility allows more control in terms of workload management, as an example.
      - Roadmaps for clusters
        Clusters topologies provide greater availability and capacity.
      - Roadmaps for advanced configurations
        Multiple clusters and portal farms are advanced configurations.
      - Roadmap: Web content servers
        A web content server is ideal to create presentation templates, content components, and other presentation elements of your website. In this roadmap, the web server, database, and user registry software are distributed to different physical servers.
    - Roadmap: Applying maintenance
      Portal maintenance is delivered through two mechanisms: individual fixes (Fixes) and combined cumulative fixes.
    - Roadmaps for migration
      Choose the appropriate migration roadmap for your environment.
    - Roadmaps for integration
      Choose the appropriate integration roadmaps for your environment.
    - Roadmap: Syndication
      Syndication is the tool that is used to replicate data from a web content library on one server to a web content library on another server. The relationship between a syndicator and a subscriber can be either a one-way or two-way relationship.
  - 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.

Roadmaps for stand-alone servers | HCL Digital Experience

A stand-alone server topology is useful for many environments. While the underlying topology is similar for many environments, the configuration steps to achieve a desired environment varies.

Roadmaps for HCL Portal Express are also available in the Version 8.5 Product Documentation. For HCL Portal Express roadmaps, see HCL Portal Express: Roadmaps for stand-alone servers.