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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.
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.
Delivering web content
The type of delivery method you use to deliver web content to your viewers depend on the type of content that is being delivered, and the type of viewers your website is intended for.
Delivering web content on a portal page
Using tools like Web Content Viewer Portlets, content associations, and web content page templates, you can build portal pages and display web content. You can also combine web content with other portlet-based content. Content associations tie viewers and portal pages to the site structure of your web content libraries.
Getting started with delivering web content on a portal page
The building blocks for delivering web content in a portal are web content viewers, web content page templates, and content mappings. These pieces provide a flexible framework that you can use to quickly assemble pages.
Creating content with sample web content template items
To illustrate how page templates, web content viewers, and content associations work together, HCL Web Content Manager provides sample web content. The sample content includes examples of web content template pages and predefined portlets that you can add to pages to render content.

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.
    - Website building blocks
      Unless you are familiar with the HCL Digital Experience and HCL Web Content Manager website model, review the building blocks. Building blocks are the different parts that make up the website framework, such as pages, navigation, themes, content, content libraries, and more.
    - Creating reusable assets
      Use reusable assets to store or generate content that is used in more than one place in your website.
    - Building the website
      Building a website includes creating libraries, pages, and web content. You also create links and navigation to your content, and assign access to different types of users, such as editors and viewers.
    - Authoring tools
      There are multiple ways to create and manage content including using the site toolbar, inline editing, and the authoring portlet.
    - Preparing for content authors
      Before content authors can create content you must prepare your site to be ready for content creation, including preparing the site toolbar, enabling inline editing, and creating templates.
    - Developing and managing content
      Use these tools and processes to develop and manage your website.
    - Delivering web content
      The type of delivery method you use to deliver web content to your viewers depend on the type of content that is being delivered, and the type of viewers your website is intended for.
      - Delivering web content on a portal page
        Using tools like Web Content Viewer Portlets, content associations, and web content page templates, you can build portal pages and display web content. You can also combine web content with other portlet-based content. Content associations tie viewers and portal pages to the site structure of your web content libraries.
        Getting started with delivering web content on a portal page
        The building blocks for delivering web content in a portal are web content viewers, web content page templates, and content mappings. These pieces provide a flexible framework that you can use to quickly assemble pages.
        Web Content Viewers
        Web Content Viewers are portlets that render content from a web content library as part of a portal page. If your presentation is simple, a single viewer can be sufficient. To provide a richer experience for your users, use multiple viewers to aggregate content from different libraries.
        Web content pages and templates
        Web content pages are portal pages that are associated with content that is managed in HCL Web Content Manager. Similar to web content pages, web content templates are page templates that are associated with content in Web Content Manager.
        Web content associations
        Web content associations are used to combine portal pages and associated web content items that are managed by HCL Web Content Manager so they can be managed and rendered consistently. Web content associations map portal pages to the site structure in the HCL Web Content Manager system.
        Creating content with sample web content template items
        To illustrate how page templates, web content viewers, and content associations work together, HCL Web Content Manager provides sample web content. The sample content includes examples of web content template pages and predefined portlets that you can add to pages to render content.
        Adding sample content with the site toolbar
        The sample content that is provided with the portal includes four pre-configured content items that you can add to a page from the site toolbar. Dragging one of these items into a page automatically creates a copy of the item and adds the copy to the page. The predefined content items are available in the site toolbar in the Web Content category of the Create Content tab.
        Creating content with the Articles template page
        The sample content that is provided with HCL Web Content Manager includes a web content template page that is called Articles. This template page demonstrates how you can build pages with predefined content.
        Adding the Articles template page to a virtual portal
        By default, virtual portals do not contain the Articles template page. To use the Articles template page in a virtual portal, follow the procedure given here.
        CSS styles used by the sample web content template items
        The markup that is generated by the sample web content template items is primarily controlled by presentation templates that are stored in the Web Content Templates 3.0 library. These templates rely on the availability of several CSS class definitions in the wp_oob_sample_styles theme module.
        Adding the sample web content libraries in the authoring portlet
        The templating sample content that is provided with HCL Digital Experience is delivered in two web content libraries: Template Page Content 3.0 and Web Content Templates 3.0. You can use these libraries and their content as a starting point for working with web content page templates and developing your own templates.
        Link examples for Web Content Viewers
        Web Content Viewers can broadcast and receive links to communicate with other viewers. Depending on the link settings that you use with the viewers, the behavior of the viewers can be different. These examples demonstrate how different broadcast and receive settings can affect what a viewer renders.
        Displaying content with Web Content Viewers
        Display content from your web content system by adding a Web Content Viewer to the server where you want the content to show.
        Customizing web content delivery
        Although web content viewers and page templates provide the basis for delivering web content, you can customize the environment to provide users with a better experience.
        Enabling remote rendering with WSRP and the Web Content Viewer
        To display web content on a portal that does not include HCL Web Content Manager, you can use the Web Content Viewer and the WSRP support in the portal. The Web Content Viewer can then retrieve and display content from a web content system on a different server.
        Advanced administrative examples
        You can undertake advanced administration for web content artifacts, such as web content pages and content associations.
        Web Content Viewer best practices and limitations
        View some best practices and limitations for using Web Content Viewers.
      - Access web content by using a servlet
        Users can access content that is displayed by using the Web Content Manager servlet by connecting to a URL. A servlet delivered website is used when you don't need to use any HCL Portal based features such as authoring tools.
      - Pre-rendered delivery
        You can pre-render a complete HCL Web Content Manager site into HTML and save it to disk. The pre-rendered site can then be used as your live site and displayed to users that use either Web Content Manager or a web server. You deploy a pre-rendered site when you are not using any HCL Portal features and your content is static and is only updated periodically.
      - Rendering modes for web content
        Different presentation templates are created to render web content in different modes to display content in different contexts, such as a web content viewer portlet, or mobile devices.
    - Vanity URLs
      You can associate vanity URLs with portal pages and labels. Vanity URLs are short URLs that people can easily remember. They are shorter than full HCL Portal URLs. They are sometimes also called marketing URLs. You can publish vanity URLs for marketing campaigns through different channels, such as email or print. This way, you can use vanity URLs to direct customers to a specific portal page or content item. Interested site visitors who want to view your campaign can then remember or copy the short vanity URL and type it into the browser address field.
    - Social rendering
      HCL Digital Experience page editors can use social rendering to feature social data that is hosted on a remote HCL Connections server in the context of portal pages.
    - Setting up marketing campaigns
      Use these tools and features to setup marketing campaigns for your website.
    - HCL Web Content Manager Multilingual Solution
      The HCL Web Content Manager Multilingual Solution is a set of tools that are used to manage translated versions of localized and regionalized websites.
    - Syndicated Feed Portlet
      The Syndicated Feed Portlet for HCL Digital Experience offers enhanced feed subscription and presentation capabilities.
  - 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.

Creating content with sample web content template items | HCL Digital Experience

To illustrate how page templates, web content viewers, and content associations work together, HCL Web Content Manager provides sample web content. The sample content includes examples of web content template pages and predefined portlets that you can add to pages to render content.

About this task

In addition to examining how these rendering pieces are defined, you can also explore the web content libraries that contain the sample content.

Note: If you want to customize the sample web content that HCL Digital Experience provides, create copies of the sample web content libraries and customize those copies.