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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.
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.
Creating and deploying the initial release
Build the initial Portal Application Archive (PAA) file, prepare the servers for the deployment, and then deploy the initial release to your production servers.
Preparing the servers for initial staging
You must set up your production servers before you move content from the staging server to the production server. The steps remove any release content from these servers to prepare them for the following import of the release data. It is assumed that these servers are fresh installed servers. The servers must not contain any customization data. Complete all database and security configurations.

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.
    - Overview of staging to production
      Review the topics in the overview section to understand all the requirements to successfully stage your production environment.
    - Creating and deploying the initial release
      Build the initial Portal Application Archive (PAA) file, prepare the servers for the deployment, and then deploy the initial release to your production servers.
      - Creating the initial release
        When you want to stage your initial release to another server, you must build the initial release Portal Application Archive (PAA) file from your source server.
      - Preparing the servers for initial staging
        You must set up your production servers before you move content from the staging server to the production server. The steps remove any release content from these servers to prepare them for the following import of the release data. It is assumed that these servers are fresh installed servers. The servers must not contain any customization data. Complete all database and security configurations.
      - Deploying the initial release
        After you create and prepare your initial staging and production servers, you must install and deploy the contents of the staging server to the production server. If you have a cluster, install and deploy on the primary and secondary nodes of the cluster. After you stage the initial release to production servers, you can install and deploy your differential release to the production servers.
      - Deploying the initial release in a multiple cluster
        If you are using a multiple cluster in single cell topology, you must run the empty-portal task before you deploy the initial release and before you deploy the PAA file. Use the -DemptyPortalDuringDeployPAA=false parameter during the deployment.
    - Creating and deploying a differential release
      Create a differential release of your existing Portal Application Archive (PAA) file. Then, deploy your changes to your production servers. Use Syndication to move HCL Web Content Manager content to your production servers.
    - Parameters to customize the release
      You can use these parameters to customize the build-initial-release-paa task when you are creating the initial or differential release.
    - Updates with syndication
      After setting up your initial staging and production servers and deploying the initial release, you can use the syndication feature of HCL Web Content Manager to update content in web content libraries. If managed pages are enabled, syndication also ensures that all required page artifacts are transferred along with the content.
    - Staging and external security managers
      Staging to production where external security managers (ESM) are used is complex and needs special consideration. The following section discusses considerations of the impact of external security managers on the staging process. External security managers can be used to externalize authentication and authorization decisions from the portal. Externalization of authentication decisions to an external security manager has no impact on the staging to production functionality. Management of authorizations by an external security manager has an impact on the staging to production scenario. Using an external security manager for authorization decisions requires that the same external security manager is used to manage authentication to the portal.
    - Manual staging to production process
      HCL Digital Experience provides two solutions through staging to production; manual and automated. For more information about the automated solution, see Staging to production. The following sections guide you through the manual solution for a stand-alone server. Two stand-alone servers are used to represent a development and production environment, which corresponds to the host name used in the examples.
  - 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.

Preparing the servers for initial staging | HCL Digital Experience

You must set up your production servers before you move content from the staging server to the production server. The steps remove any release content from these servers to prepare them for the following import of the release data. It is assumed that these servers are fresh installed servers. The servers must not contain any customization data. Complete all database and security configurations.

Procedure

Install and configure HCL Portal on the production server. This step includes database and security configurations.
Attention: Ensure that your security configurations and context root URLs match on the staging and production servers. Also, ensure that the production server is configured with the wanted external database.
Log on to the production server and delete all existing Web Content Manager Libraries.
Click the Administration menu icon. Then, click Portal Content > Web Content Libraries. Click Delete library for each library on the system.
Attention: Edit any libraries that have the option Prohibit library from being deleted. Clear that option before you delete them.
If you use the Web Application Bridge feature, set the context root for the wp.vwat.servlet.ear application:
1. Log on to the WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console.
2. Go to Applications > Application Types > WebSphere enterprise applications.
3. Find and click the wp.vwat.servlet.ear application link.
4. Under the Web Module Properties heading, click Context Root For Web Modules.
5. Change the context root to /. This step can create name conflicts. Add a rewrite rule to avoid these conflicts. For more information read Apache Module mod_rewrite and Providing short vanity URLs.
6. Click OK.
7. Click Save to save your changes to the master configuration.
8. Stop and restart the wp.vwat.servlet.ear application.
If you have a clustered environment, turn off automatic node synchronization on all secondary nodes.