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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.
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.
Elements
Create a website by, building templates, and specifying other key components of the system. When these items are in place, you can begin adding elements to your templates and use them to create content items.
Selection elements
You use these elements to make selections from existing elements and data.
Component reference element
You use a component reference element to store a reference to a component.

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.
      - Site Builder
        Site Builder is an application that you can use to create site templates or section templates for use with HCL Digital Experience.
      - Content Template
        The Content Template (CTC) is a set of templates that accelerate the process of building a website. You should also install the Content Template with Site Builder so you can build sites based on Content Template components.
      - Content libraries
        Content libraries store the assets for your website, including but not limited to pages, content, images, authoring and presentation templates, and workflows.
      - Setting up access
        Access controls allow you to assign access to who has the ability to view rendered constant and pages, and who has the ability to edit or administer content, pages, or features.
      - Taxonomy
        Before creating a taxonomy, you should analyze how the taxonomy will be used in your site to determine the best structure for your taxonomy.
      - Navigation
        Navigation is defined by your page hierarchy and your site area hierarchy. Navigation elements include your page theme, menus, and navigators.
      - Elements
        Create a website by, building templates, and specifying other key components of the system. When these items are in place, you can begin adding elements to your templates and use them to create content items.
        Links and navigation
        You use these elements to define or generate links between different pages in a website, or add navigational elements to a website.
        How to use a search element
        A search element is used to display the results of a search query. A search element cannot be used in isolation, but must be used together with an HTML element that is used to define the search query form.
        How to store text and HTML
        You use different types of elements to store text or HTML depending on the type of text or HTML being created.
        How to store files and images
        You use these elements to store files or images.
        Selection elements
        You use these elements to make selections from existing elements and data.
        Component reference element
        You use a component reference element to store a reference to a component.
        Date and time element
        You use a date and time element to store a date or time to be displayed on a web page.
        Option selection element
        An option selection element is used to present a list of predefined options that your content creators can select from when you create a content item or site area. An option selection element can be added to an authoring template only.
        User selection element
        A user selection element stores a selection of users or groups.
        Personalized content
        You use these elements to create or reference personalized content.
        Page navigation element
        A page navigation element provides navigation controls that are used to browse through a set of results that are generated by menus, navigators, personalization, and search elements.
        URL generation by using PathCmpnt and URLCmpnt tags
        There are some special considerations to keep in mind when you use URLCmpnt and PathCmpnt tags to create URLs to other web content items from within your content.
        Personalizing federated documents
        Portal Personalization provides the federated documents feature to retrieve metadata about documents that are stored in external content management systems or document repositories. Examples of these systems include HCL Content Manager, IBM FileNet Content Manager, and Microsoft Sharepoint. You can use a personalization component in HCL Web Content Manager to display metadata from federated documents and to create links to download or open the documents.
      - Tags
        Tags are used in your markup to reference content that is stored or generated by elements, or to display metadata from different items.
      - Setting up search for site visitors
        Learn about the initial considerations for setting up search for site visitors before you begin configuring and administering search on your website.
      - Taxonomies, Categories, and keywords
        The combination of taxonomy and categories enables control what displays in menus.
      - How to store translated text in a content item or site area
        Translated text can be stored in a content item or site area. The translated text can then be referenced in web content tags, or as localized text in web content authoring portlet forms.
      - Hiding content
        You can hide portlets and widgets on a page so they are present but not visible in the page layout.
      - Static content
        Static content is part of every website. In a portal site, static content can be rendered as static page or it can be added to specific content areas on a page.
      - Dynamic content
        Dynamic content is generated when a page is rendered and is based on a set of predefined criteria such as the current user, the metadata of the current page. It allows you to deliver content specifically customized for the current user, or to deliver content customized for a campaign or product in your organization.
      - Content as a Service pages
        Starting with version 8.5 CF05, HCL Digital Experience introduces the concept of Content as a Service pages. The Content as a Service pages can be used to render content that is managed by your HCL Web Content Manager in different data formats.
      - URLs
        Portal URLs do not look like plain HTTP server URLs over a simple file system. Portal URLs have a complex structure and include a large compressed and encoded XML Navigation State document. The stream of random characters in a Portal URL is the Navigation State document. Full Portal function depends on correctly maintaining this Navigation State document during all the operations a user might do in Portal. Forcing Portal URLs to look like plain HTTP server URLs over a simple file system structure cripples the function of HCL Portal.
    - 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.

Component reference element | HCL Digital Experience

You use a component reference element to store a reference to a component.

You can use component reference elements in two ways:

A component-reference element can be added to an authoring template so that content creators can select an existing component from the component library rather than build the component themselves.
By referencing a component-reference element in a presentation template or another element, the component that is being displayed can be changed without having to change the presentation template or element design.
For example, if you referenced a component-reference element called "Featured Product" in more than one presentation template the element that is referenced within the component-reference element can be changed without having to edit the presentation templates.

Creating a component reference element

To create a component reference element, you can either add a component reference element to an authoring template, site area or content item, or create a component reference component.