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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.
Creating reusable assets
Use reusable assets to store or generate content that is used in more than one place in your website.
Content items
Content items are created from authoring templates. A single content item can be used one time in the website or it can be reused in different areas of the website.

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.
      - Page templates
        Content authors use the page templates to quickly create pages that are consistent with your site design. They do not have to waste time to configure settings that are probably consistent across your site, such as theme selection, page layout, and more.
      - An overview of authoring templates
        Authoring templates are like forms that content authors can use to create new content. It defines default settings for the items that are created by using the authoring template. There are two types in authoring templates, site area and content.
      - Presentation templates
        You use a presentation template define the layout of your web content. Use tags to determine which properties, elements, or components are displayed.
      - Template mappings
        Template mappings are used to determine which presentation templates are used to display each site area or content item.
      - Content items
        Content items are created from authoring templates. A single content item can be used one time in the website or it can be reused in different areas of the website.
      - Components
        You use components to store elements that are used in more than one area of your website. For example, a company logo or a copyright notice.
    - 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.
    - 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.

Content items | HCL Digital Experience

Content items are created from authoring templates. A single content item can be used one time in the website or it can be reused in different areas of the website.

If you have content that you want to appear on multi-pages, create a content item. Then link the content item to the different areas in the website where the content needs to appear. This approach ensures consistency and makes changing the content items easier.

The authoring template can determine what element types are included in a content item, whether a workflow is used or not and what workflow to use, and where the content item can be saved.

Each content item that you create is the equivalent to a web page in a traditional website. Unlike traditional websites, a single content item can be linked to different areas within your website, or linked to a different website altogether. The changes that you make to a single content item is visible in every place you link the content item to.

The look and feel of a content item when displayed in a website depends on what authoring template was used to create the content item, and what presentation template is used to display the content. The presentation template that is used depends on the current context of the content item, and which template mapping applies to the current context of the content item.