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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.
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.
Online Help topics
Online Help includes HCL Digital Experience information that is available from the product user interface. Online Help for both administrative and content author roles are also available. Help for the Configuration Wizard is also included.
User assistance for content authors
Create an exceptional experience for site visitors. Integrate compelling digital content into your website or intranet by using lightweight content management tools. Edit content and integrate digital assets inline and then publish changes efficiently.
Welcome to your Digital Experience
Learn about the many capabilities that are available for delivering an exceptional Digital Experience to site visitors. The enhanced content authoring experience means you can invest less time developing custom authoring environments. The flexible framework means you can integrate applications and content into your website and still retain a cohesive user experience.
Site Builder and Content Template
The Content Template (CTC) is a set of site and section templates that accelerate the process of building a website. Site Builder is an application that you use to create site templates or section templates for use with HCL Digital Experience. Installing Content Template and Site Builder together offers you the widest choice of website designs.

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.
    - Online Help topics
      Online Help includes HCL Digital Experience information that is available from the product user interface. Online Help for both administrative and content author roles are also available. Help for the Configuration Wizard is also included.
      - User assistance for content authors
        Create an exceptional experience for site visitors. Integrate compelling digital content into your website or intranet by using lightweight content management tools. Edit content and integrate digital assets inline and then publish changes efficiently.
        Welcome to your Digital Experience
        Learn about the many capabilities that are available for delivering an exceptional Digital Experience to site visitors. The enhanced content authoring experience means you can invest less time developing custom authoring environments. The flexible framework means you can integrate applications and content into your website and still retain a cohesive user experience.
        Mobile
        Built on responsive web design principles, the theme dynamically controls the appearance, page navigation, and content layout of a Digital Experience on a wide range of devices. Responsive web design allows you to create rich engaging digital experiences one time that can run on smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
        Authoring
        From the site toolbar, content authors can access and work with projects, create new content and pages, and edit published pages.
        Content targeting
        Content targeting displays or hides different content to different groups of users, so you can deliver multiple pieces of content to different audiences. Audiences are grouped into segments that are based on interests or characteristics. Content items can be associated with selected segments. When someone in a segment views the site, they can view only the content item that matches the segment that they are grouped into. You can hide content from selected segments as well.
        Social Digital Experience
        The Social Digital Experience that is provided by the HCL social business platform includes social websites with social content, social networking, and social analytics. All these areas are provided secure and in context of enterprise management and governance.
        Site Builder and Content Template
        The Content Template (CTC) is a set of site and section templates that accelerate the process of building a website. Site Builder is an application that you use to create site templates or section templates for use with HCL Digital Experience. Installing Content Template and Site Builder together offers you the widest choice of website designs.
        Business Process Manager and Forms Experience Builder integration
        You can integrate HCL Portal with IBM Business Process Manager and Forms Experience Builder to simplify your workflows.
        Cloud and virtualization
        IBM PureSystems is a product family of expertly integrated systems. It combines software and hardware to give you a pre-configured, efficient virtualization operating system. The offering from PureSystems that function with the HCL Digital Experience v8.5 Pattern editions is the IBM PureApplication System (PureApp). It includes IBM middleware images and patterns to customize and deploy. It relies on the IBM Workload Deployer Appliance or successor PureApplication System function to handle image and instance management. The IBM Workload Deployer Appliance function is a part of PureApp. Therefore, working with the HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager patterns within PureApp is identical to working with them on IBM Workload Deployer Appliance.
        Operations
        To manage day-to-day needs, there are a number of tools for administrators: Administration portlets, XML Access, and the Configuration Wizard.
        Web Application Bridge
        The Web Application Bridge uses reverse proxy technology to integrate web-based content providers, such as the Microsoft SharePoint server, with HCL Digital Experience. Administrators create content provider profiles, policies, and web dock applications. Authors add the applications to a page without requiring direct network access to the backend application. A special engine maps Uniform Resource Identifier (URIs) on the iFrame portlet to real URIs from the content providers.
        Portal Search
        Learn more about the features of Portal search, including customizing the search experience for site visitors and new search features that are included with HCL Portal version 8.5 and later releases.
        Developer tools
        Learn more about the developer tools and features of HCL Portal, including HCL Web Experience Factory Designer and IBM Rational Application Developer for HCL Digital Experience Software.
        Information and Education
        Formal and informal education, documentation, and community content is available to help you get started and accomplish your goals.
        Building a site with Site Builder
        Use Site Builder to create sites and add sections using predefined site and section templates.
        Adding pages, content, and more
        As a content author, your goal is to visualize the best way to organize information on your site with pages and content. You might need to create a section in the site for a new product or you might want to change the arrangement of pages in the navigation based on customer feedback. Either way, you always start with a project and end with publishing your updates.
        Configure your content spot
        The Configure Spot feature provides a convenient place for selecting the type of content to display in a web content viewer. You can target content to segments, display content with page context, or select a specific content item for the spot.
        Applications for Content Authors
        Use the following applications to create and manage content on your site.
        Search Center
        Use the Search Center to search for documents.
      - User assistance for administrators
        As an administrator, you can manage access to resources in the website, deploy new applications, and more.
      - Directory structure
        The topic shows the naming conventions that are used to denote the location of files on the servers and the types of resources you can find in those directories.
      - Configuration Wizard
        You installed your HCL Digital Experience software. Now let the Configuration Wizard guide you through configuring your system. To begin, select a configuration option and provide basic input about your environment. Based on this information, the Configuration Wizard provides you with examples, recommended values, customized instructions, and scripts that you can run.
  - 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.

Site Builder and Content Template | HCL Digital Experience

The Content Template (CTC) is a set of site and section templates that accelerate the process of building a website. Site Builder is an application that you use to create site templates or section templates for use with HCL Digital Experience. Installing Content Template and Site Builder together offers you the widest choice of website designs.

Building websites

Site Builder includes two ready made site templates. One for websites, and one for Intranets. In addition to these, your web site developers can add custom built site templates and section templates that you use to build your own website.

Content Template includes a set of content ready page templates. You create new pages based on these templates, and then customize them, and add your own content to be displayed in these pages. A set of content-ready portlets can also be accessed from the toolbar. These include image slideshows, video-ready portlets, and navigational portlets.

Once you have created you site, you can easily update the content of you site using the inline editing features that allow you to edit text directly in the current page.

Developing author ready site, section, and page templates

Site administrators can create their own site templates and section templates using Site Builder. Select page templates to pre-define the structure of your site template or section template.

Site administrators can copy and customize Content Template page templates and portlets for their own use. Custom page templates can also be used in custom Site Builder site templates and section templates.