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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.
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.
Improving page loading performance with asynchronous web content rendering
You can increase page loading performance by separating portal page content delivery from web content rendering. To do so, you use the asynchronous web content rendering feature. If you enable asynchronous web content rendering, the portal serves the page immediately, but only with placeholder content. The Web Content Viewer then dynamically inserts the configured content into the portal page after the content has been completely rendered.

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.
        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.
        Creating web content page templates
        Create web content page templates to quickly deploy new pages that contain web content. With a template, you can define the layout and presentation of the page, including adding web content viewers that are configured to render web content.
        Creating web content when you add a web content viewer to a page
        To make it easier for users to find web content, the site toolbar provides palettes. You use these palettes to organize components that you can add, such as portlets, iWidgets, and web content.
        Customizing error messages for Web Content Viewers
        If an error occurs during rendering, the Web Content Viewer shows an error screen. You can customize the default error screen, and you can create your own custom JSP file that is used to display error messages.
        Friendly URLs and Web Content Viewers
        Friendly URLs provide a way for you to define a custom address for a portal page that is easy to remember and share. The Web Content Viewer expands on friendly URL support so you can specify extra path information in the friendly URL.
        Setting up a web content fallback page
        Set up a web content fallback page to be used when a web content viewer cannot determine which page to use to display a content item. The fallback page can also be used when users do not have sufficient privileges to view the page originally associated with the content item.
        Enabling page-based access control for web content pages
        Typically, when you render content items in a web content viewer, access control enforcement on those content items is handled by HCL Web Content Manager. However, you can use page-based access control to delegate access control enforcement to the web content page that is used to display the content.
        Previewing content on web content pages
        When working with content in the authoring portlet, you can preview content items in a portal environment as part of a web content page. To preview content items, there must be a web content viewer on the associated web content page, and the viewer must be configured to receive links.
        Adding HTML meta tags for Search Engine Optimization
        Search engine optimization (SEO) focuses on improving the visibility of a page or website in search engine results. A basic technique of SEO is adding HTML title and meta tags to your page source. These meta tags are used to define description information and other metadata that search web engines and crawlers can use when they create search indexes and collections. When you include content in a page with a web content viewer, you can improve the search engine optimization of the page by adding title and meta tags with values derived from the web content itself.
        Improving page loading performance with asynchronous web content rendering
        You can increase page loading performance by separating portal page content delivery from web content rendering. To do so, you use the asynchronous web content rendering feature. If you enable asynchronous web content rendering, the portal serves the page immediately, but only with placeholder content. The Web Content Viewer then dynamically inserts the configured content into the portal page after the content has been completely rendered.
        Enabling asynchronous web content rendering
        You enable asynchronous web content rendering by using the Edit Shared Settings or Configure mode.
        Customizing loading markup for asynchronous web content rendering
        To adjust the loading markup to the user experience, you can customize it. For example, you can use a company-specific loading icon or text.
        Using onPageLoad scenarios with asynchronous web content rendering
        Separating the page delivery from the web content delivery can increase the page loading time. However, all JavaScript functions that rely on the onPageLoad functions can access only the bootstrapping markup, but not the rendered web content markup. The web content markup is injected into the page as soon as it is ready.
        Asynchronous web content rendering and caching
        The Web Content Viewer portlet supports setting specific portlet fragment caching configuration values. This caching also works with asynchronous web content rendering. However, the respective content for the fragment cache is different.
        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.

Improving page loading performance with asynchronous web content rendering | HCL Digital Experience

You can increase page loading performance by separating portal page content delivery from web content rendering. To do so, you use the asynchronous web content rendering feature. If you enable asynchronous web content rendering, the portal serves the page immediately, but only with placeholder content. The Web Content Viewer then dynamically inserts the configured content into the portal page after the content has been completely rendered.

About this task

Asynchronous web content rendering separates the web content delivery into two steps:

First, HCL Digital Experience serves the page with a predefined static markup instead of the web content. This so called bootstrap markup then asynchronously triggers the second stage by using a resource URL.
In a second step, the Web Content Viewer portlet renders the requested web content, which then is inserted into the correct placeholder of the current portal page. For this step, the Web Content Viewer portlet uses the XmlHttpRequest function of the web browser and JSR 286 compliant serving of resources.

Asynchronous web content rendering is intended to be used for web content that needs a long time to be created. Examples are web content that is remotely served or content that is created by extensive back-end operations. Such content increases the total time for loading a portal page because the portal needs to aggregate all portlets on a page. Therefore, the user experience improves by selectively enabling asynchronous web content rendering for Web Content Viewer portlets that take a long time to render. Whether asynchronous web content rendering is useful depends on the page composition and the web content. The site administrator needs to evaluate it for each individual portlet.

Notes:

By default, asynchronous web content rendering is disabled for all instances of the Web Content Viewer portlet. You enable it by using the Edit Shared Settings or Configure mode.
If you enable asynchronous rendering, the Web Content Viewer portlet uses it only while the portal is in View mode.
The portal does not use asynchronous web content rendering for requests by search crawlers. This way, the portal makes sure that web content is correctly analyzed and used by search engines.