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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.
Content Template Catalog 4.4
The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website.
Roadmaps for Content Template Catalog
These roadmaps are designed to help you get started with Content Template Catalog.
A Content Template Catalog roadmap for site developers
A roadmap for site developers to help them get started with extending and customizing Content Template Catalog.
A roadmap for customizing Content Template
A quick guide to customizing your Content Template site.

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.
  - 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.
    - Content Template overview
      You can use Content Template Catalog to mock up a site quickly or to build the skeleton of a site as a basis for further development. By using the templating patterns that Content Template Catalog is built on, you can supply a customized system for your users that lets them build their own sites. Content Template 4.4 requires HCL Digital Experience 8.5 with CF08 or higher installed.
    - Roadmaps for Content Template Catalog
      These roadmaps are designed to help you get started with Content Template Catalog.
      - A roadmap for Content Template Catalog site authors
        This roadmap is a guide for site authors to help them get started with Content Template Catalog.
      - A Content Template Catalog roadmap for site developers
        A roadmap for site developers to help them get started with extending and customizing Content Template Catalog.
        How Content Template is built
        Content Template is a model of how a website can be built by using HCL Portal and HCL Web Content Manager. You can reuse different parts of Content Template to build your own website, or use Content Template as the basis of your own model.
        How a page is built by using Content Template Catalog
        This is the landing page for the Internet site that is included with the Content Template Catalog and is an example of how Content Template Catalog is used to build a page.
        Site structure and page templates
        Each site that you build with Content Template Catalog contains several page templates and a repeated structure for each site area in the content repository. You must follow this pattern when you build a Content Template site because that is how the templates were designed. Each template instantiates a "microsite" of content artifacts along with the page. The portlets on the page are automatically linked to this content.
        Creating and managing page component configurations
        There are often occasions when the same page component configuration can be used either throughout the site, or at least across an entire branch of the site. In these cases, you need to manage the usage of the page component configuration by ensuring it is created once, and then reused by using the page component configuration portlet.
        Content types
        Content Template Catalog Index and Details page templates are associated with several content types. These content types were selected to cover most of the common content types that are used on both intranet and internet sites.
        A roadmap for customizing Content Template
        A quick guide to customizing your Content Template site.
        Start by creating pages
        Start by creating pages that display the type of content you want to add to your site. Edit the structure and design of these pages. Later, these pages can be turned into new page templates.
        Creating new Web templates
        When creating new Web template types, you create new items, which are copied from generic templates, and place them in a new design library.
        How to create new content types
        To create new content types, you create new items, which are copied from generic templates, and place them in a new design library.
        How to change the design
        Modify the CSS styles that are used for layout and presentation of content and pages.
        Convert custom sites to templates
        To convert a custom site into a template, move content into the template library, make pages available as templates, and make component available for reuse.
    - Planning to use Content Template
      You must install Content Template Catalog on all servers you plan to use to develop, demonstrate, manage, or deliver a site that uses Content Template page templates and portlets.
    - First-time installation of Content Template
      The Content Template Catalog is installed with everything you need to build a site. You can also install the demonstration site to learn from seeing the design of a working site.
    - Upgrade and Migration of Content Template
      Content Template Catalog 4.4 is an update to Content Template 4.3, 4.2, 4.1.x, 4.0, and 3.x. When installed on an existing system, the newer version updates existing assets and installs new assets.
    - Customizing sites built with Content Template
      When you customize Content Template Catalog components, you make your website unique, with its own style, user interface, and authoring environment.
    - How to deploy sites built with Content Template
      The templates in Content Template Catalog help you build a site, with all the necessary content types, templates, and components. Use these templates as a base for your site and then customize it to place the site into the business context of an organization.
    - How to apply the multilingual solution to Content Template sites
      The HCL Web Content Manager Multilingual Solution consists of patterns, tools, and plug-ins for creating and managing multi-language and multi-locale sites.
    - Assets contained in the Content Template
      This is a reference guide for the assets that are delivered with the Content Template.
    - Troubleshooting Content Template sites
      Use the tips in this section to troubleshoot a site that is built with Content Template Catalog templates.
    - How to remove Content Template
      The procedure for removing Content Template Catalog varies depending on which components you installed, if you installed it on virtual portals, and if you added your own pages or templates.

A roadmap for customizing Content Template | HCL Digital Experience

A quick guide to customizing your Content Template site.

For more details, see Customizing sites built with Content Template.