Welcome
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 EOS
Learn how to install, configure, troubleshoot, maintain, and use Version 8.5 of HCL Web Content Manager and HCL Portal Server, Enable, and Extend.
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.
HCL Web Content Manager
Set up a content server by installing HCL Web Content Manager in various deployments to provide robust and flexible environments for web content development and delivery. After you install the content server, more configuration steps must be completed according to the role that the server plays in your web content environment.
Further configuration options
These configuration options are available to address installation requirements for other deployment scenarios.
Controlling access to hosts specified in a URL
By default, you can specify any host name in a URL used to retrieve content. However, you can restrict access to a specified list of host names by modifying the configuration of the WCM WCMConfigService service.

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 9.0 EOS
  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 EOS
  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.
    - Configuration Wizard
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up stand-alone servers and new deployments, create clusters, migrate and update to new versions, and add new capabilities to existing deployments.
    - Setting up a stand-alone server
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up a stand-alone server. A stand-alone server is useful for different environments, such as a content authoring environment, test environment, and more.
    - Setting up a cluster
      Use the Configuration Wizard to set up either a dynamic or static horizontal cluster.
    - Tune your environment
      HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment by default. Complete the steps in the Performance Tuning Guide to optimize performance.
    - Web servers
      HCL Digital Experience uses the internal HTTP transport within IBM WebSphere Application Server to handle requests. However, because WebSphere Application Server also supports the use of an external web server, you can access HCL Portal from your web server. You can use a local web server on the same server as HCL Portal or you can use a remote web server on a different server. A remote web server is typical for a production environment or other high-traffic configuration and is also typically placed in DMZ outside a firewall to protect portal ports.
    - HCL Portal
      First, finish your HCL Digital Experience deployment with the Configuration Wizard. Then, you can configure your environment further. For example, you can tune your servers to improve performance. You can change the default context root.
    - HCL Web Content Manager
      Set up a content server by installing HCL Web Content Manager in various deployments to provide robust and flexible environments for web content development and delivery. After you install the content server, more configuration steps must be completed according to the role that the server plays in your web content environment.
      - Configuring a web content authoring environment
        Set up the authoring environment by installing the authoring portlet and enabling other features that are required to support the authoring environment.
      - How to configure a web content staging environment
        Configure the staging environment to emulate the web content delivery environment and allow for testing before deployment.
      - Configuring a web content delivery environment
        Set up your delivery environment by installing web content viewers and enabling any other required features.
      - Reserved authoring portlet
        When you use the web content viewer or web content pages, some scenarios involve web content authoring tasks that are accomplished with authoring tools components. Authoring tasks are run through a special instance of the authoring portlet that is reserved specifically for these tasks and is installed on page that is hidden from the page navigation available to typical users.
      - Further configuration options
        These configuration options are available to address installation requirements for other deployment scenarios.
        Controlling access to hosts specified in a URL
        By default, you can specify any host name in a URL used to retrieve content. However, you can restrict access to a specified list of host names by modifying the configuration of the WCM WCMConfigService service.
        Web content substitution variables
        HCL Web Content Manager uses several substitution variables that are defined in the configuration for IBM WebSphere Application Server.
        Setting scoped configuration settings for virtual portals
        HCL Web Content Manager configuration settings can be scoped for individual virtual portals.
        Disabling Workflow Actions
        Disable workflow action on servers that do not require workflows to be processed, such as a subscriber. This strategy can improve performance and reduce the number of versions that are created for each item.
        Enabling connect tags
        Enable connect tags to reference web content components and apply customized caching to the components.
        Remove authoring configuration task
        The remove authoring configuration task uninstalls the authoring portlet and related portal pages.
        Enabling email
        To use the email workflow action, you must configure Web Content Manager to use your SMTP server.
        Defining alternative administrators for multi-realm configurations
        Web Content Manager requires a user to run various system tasks such as initialization, and background tasks such as syndication. By default, this system user is the configured JCR domain administrator. In scenarios where the configured user realm does not contain the domain administrator then an alternative user must be provided.
        Changing the login or redirect page used for servlet rendering
        When an unauthenticated user accesses secured content using servlet rendering, the user is redirected to the Web Content Manager login page by default.
      - Configuring managed pages
        When you create a new installation of HCL Digital Experience 8.5, managed pages are enabled by default. However, you can also manually disable and enable the feature as needed.
      - Managing tagging and rating for web content
        When you use tagging and rating with web content, the web content viewer provides extra scope options for the filtering of tagging and rating results. Because changes in the web content system can affect the accuracy of the tagging and rating information that is used by the portal, it is important to keep the scope information up to date by synchronizing the scopes regularly.
      - Overview of a multilingual site
      - Installing the multilingual extensions
        The multilingual solution consists of a set of extensions to Web Content Manager that can be used to manage the authoring, workflow, and configuration of your multilingual system.
    - Syndication
      Use syndication to replicate web content library data from one server to another server. Syndication is based on a syndicator and subscriber relationship. The syndicator has the current data. The subscriber received the current data from the syndicator.
    - Database Management Systems
      Configure the connection between HCL Digital Experience and your database management system. The Database Transfer configuration option in the Configuration Wizard assigns users and permissions, creates databases, obtains support for database collation, and transfers your database.
    - User registry
      User information is stored in your user registry. You can enable LDAP referrals, configure HCL Digital Experience to use dynamic groups, update your user registry, or delete your user registry configurations.
    - Search
      You use Portal Search to search for text that is displayed in websites that are created by HCL Web Content Manager.
    - Document Conversion Services
      Document Conversion Services are used when you work with HCL Web Content Manager authoring, previewing, and search.
    - Setting up a remote spell checker
      Using a local spell checker is not supported. You cannot run spell checker on 64-bit systems. Instead, you must install and configure spell checker on a remote application server and access that server from the local HCL Portal server.
    - HCL Connections
      HCL Connections portlets give the HCL Digital Experience users access to more collaboration and social networking features such as activities, blogs, and bookmarks.
    - Reference: Configuration properties
      For your convenience, the properties files that are used to configure HCL Digital Experience are included in the product documentation. Information that is specified in the properties files is used to configure databases, LDAP integration, security, including external security managers, and more.
  - 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.

Controlling access to hosts specified in a URL | HCL Digital Experience

By default, you can specify any host name in a URL used to retrieve content. However, you can restrict access to a specified list of host names by modifying the configuration of the WCM WCMConfigService service.

Procedure

Log in to the WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console.
Click Resources > Resource Environment > Resource Environment Providers > WCM WCMConfigService > Custom properties.

Cluster note: If you are using this web content server as part of a cluster, ensure that you use the WebSphere® Integrated Solutions Console for the deployment manager when you edit configuration properties.
Update the configuration to block access from unknown hosts.
Specify the following property:
- Property name: connect.connector.httpconnector.denyunknownhosts
- Value: true
For each host name for which you want to grant access, add property.
Use the following format for new properties:
- Property name: connect.connector.httpconnector.hosts.host_name, where host_name is the fully qualified host name of the server for which you want to grant access. For example: connect.connector.httpconnector.hosts.www.example.com
- Value: true or false
Optional: Specify a default cache expiration value for the host name you added by adding a property.
Use the following format for new properties:
- Property name: connect.connector.httpconnector.hosts.host_name.defaultcacheexpires, where host_name is the fully qualified host name of the server for which you want to grant access. For example: connect.connector.httpconnector.hosts.www.example.com.defaultcacheexpires
- Value: expiration_time. For example: REL 9000s
Optional: Specify a default cache setting for the host name you added by adding a property.
Use the following format for new properties:
- Property name: connect.connector.httpconnector.hosts.host_name.defaultcache, where host_name is the fully qualified host name of the server for which you want to grant access. For example: connect.connector.httpconnector.hosts.www.example.com.defaultcacheexpires
- Value: true or false