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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.
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.

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 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.
      - Copying the JCR database
        Copy the JCR database that is used on the source environment with the following steps.
      - Exporting from source
        Export the portal artifacts on the source environment, with XMLAccess and sample scripts.
      - Using copy of source JCR database domain
        Use the copied JCR database for the target production environment. This process involves modifying the database properties, validating the connection, and connecting to the copied database.
      - Importing in target
        Import the base release and remaining portal artifacts on the target. This process includes emptying the portal before you import the source pages, portlets, and other artifacts.
      - Validating the environment
        Validate the portal artifacts on the target (production) environment and set up the syndication relationship. This process is a manual validation of the environment. An automated multiple user test on both environments helps find any incomplete configuration steps.
  - 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.

Manual staging to production process | HCL Digital Experience

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.

You can migrate either a stand-alone, single server or a clustered deployment with nodes distributed across multiple servers. The following sections provide a step-by-step experience of staging an environment from development to production with HCL Portal 8.5. It is required and expected that the development and production environments are installed and configured with the same portal release. If you are using multiple DB2® database servers, the DB2® versions must be at the same level to successfully back up and restore the JCR database. Otherwise, a DBA might be required to complete the move across systems.