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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.
Developing and managing content
Use these tools and processes to develop and manage your website.
Workflow and change management
You can manage changes to web content items either by creating drafts, by using workflows, or adding items to projects.
Item status
There are three major status levels that an item can be in at any one time; Draft, Published, or Expired. The current state of an item indicates where the item exists within a change management process, and where that item can be viewed and accessed.

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.
      - Previewing as another user
        You can preview changes to your website without logging out and logging on again as another user. This preview capability is used to quickly verify that users with different access levels see only content that they are authorized to see. You can preview changes as a specific user or as an unauthenticated user.
      - Projects
        Projects are used to change a set of items on your site and ensure that they are published together at the same time. A new project has a default workflow that allows content to be reviewed and approved before it is published.
      - Workflow and change management
        You can manage changes to web content items either by creating drafts, by using workflows, or adding items to projects.
        Item status
        There are three major status levels that an item can be in at any one time; Draft, Published, or Expired. The current state of an item indicates where the item exists within a change management process, and where that item can be viewed and accessed.
        Workflow stages and actions
        You use workflows to control the access to, verification and eventual approval of items. Only if an item is approved at all stages up to a published stage can it be viewed on your website.
        Adding workflow to managed pages
        The default workflow that is used for published pages has only a draft and approved state. However, if the default workflow is not sufficient, you can define custom workflows and use them with published pages.
      - HCL Web Content Integrator
        The HCL Web Content Integrator is a solution for integrating externally managed web content with HCL Portal. By using standard content syndication feed technologies based on RSS 2.0, the Web Content Integrator provides a loosely coupled mechanism for transferring published content and metadata to the portal after they are approved in the source system. When the content and metadata are transferred to the portal, it is possible to use the built-in content management features of Web Content Manager to secure, personalize, and display the content to users.
      - WebDAV
        With WebDAV for HCL Digital Experience, you can use standard operating system tools to create, modify, and delete web content rather than the standard authoring portlet.
      - Blogs
        Use blogs and blog libraries to provide news and commentary on a variety of subjects pertinent to your intranet and extranet sites. Blogs and blog libraries typically combine text with graphics and links to other blogs and websites. Entries that you create and post are arranged in reverse-chronological order, with the newest entry displayed first. Readers can post comments about your entries, fostering discussions and online networking. You can manage your own blog entries and comment on other blog entries. You can also incorporate tagging and rating as you would with other WebSphere Portal content.
      - Wikis
        Use wikis to share community content on a variety of subjects pertinent to your intranet and extranet sites. Wikis typically combine text with graphics and links to other wikis and websites. You can monitor and manage your own wiki articles.
      - Installed portlets
        Learn about the portlets that are provided with HCL Digital Experience.
      - Renditions
        Renditions are different versions of an image component or element. Renditions can be thumbnails or smaller versions of an image formatted for mobile devices.
      - Video start and end points
        File components or elements that have a video file that is stored in an HTML5 video format, which includes MP4, webM, or ogg, are stored in Brightcove and have a Brightcove ID.
    - 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.

Item status | HCL Digital Experience

There are three major status levels that an item can be in at any one time; Draft, Published, or Expired. The current state of an item indicates where the item exists within a change management process, and where that item can be viewed and accessed.

Status types

Draft: This indicates that the item is being updated.
Pending published: An item that uses a workflow can appear in a state of pending published. This indicates that the item has entered a workflow stage that includes a publish action but the action has yet to be processed.

Published: A published status indicates that an item is ready to be rendered in the live site.

Pending expired: An item that uses a workflow can appear in a state of pending expired. This indicates that the item has entered a workflow stage that includes an expire action but the action has yet to be processed.

Expired: An expired status indicates that an item is ready to be expired from the live site.

Changing status

The status of an item can change only in a linear fashion:

Draft to Published.
Published to Expired.
Expired to Published.
Published to Draft.

You cannot change an item's status from Expired to Draft.

The process of publishing and expiring items

When the status of an item changes to published or expired, this change does not mean that the item has been added or removed from the rendered site. A status of published or expired means that the process of publishing or expiring an item has begun.

The actual time a published item appears on a website, or the time an expired item is removed from a website, also depends on:

how long it takes to syndicate updates to the delivery server
how long it takes for the current cache to expire