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Portlet and theme development environment: Roadmap

This HCL Digital Experience roadmap is ideal for running a portlet and theme development server, which is used to develop and test portlets and themes.

Who should use this roadmap

Use this roadmap if you are an organization that requires an environment to develop and test portlets and themes before they go live to the server. Do not use this roadmap to develop web content.

Topology diagram

The topology for a portlet and theme environment is the same as the demonstration environment. It includes a portal server with a local database. However, the software configuration is different. The topology diagram depicts a portal server that is connected to a code repository for group development. While the topology diagram depicts a server, the portlet and theme environment might be configured on a notebook computer.

Portal server with a local database and a code repository.

Preparing for the installation process

Gather information and software before you install HCL Digital Experience.

  1. Check product system requirements.

  2. Log in to HCL Software Support and get the software.

Installing prerequisites

Before you install HCL Digital Experience, install prerequisites that are required for your environment. You can use current prerequisite software installations. Verify that the current version is supported. If it is not supported, upgrade to the supported version.

  1. Prepare a database server.

  2. Prepare a user registry.

Installing the HCL Digital Experience

Installing HCL Digital Experience involves preparing your operating system, installing or upgrading the installation manager, and running the installation program. Visit Installing the HCL Digital Experience software for more topic information.

Applying the latest cumulative fix

Portal maintenance is delivered through individual Fixes and Combined Cumulative Fixes (CFs), which are recommended to your environment.

Transferring your database

After you install your web experience, Apache Server is your available database. Depending on your requirements, you might need to transfer to a different database. The Database Transfer configuration option in the Configuration wizard assigns users and permissions, creates databases, obtains support for database collation, and transfers your database.

Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that your portal works:

http://<hostname.example.com>:10039/wps/portal
Where: - hostname.example.com is the fully qualified host name of the server. - The portal is running and 10039 is the default transport port that is the DX® Application Server created. The port number might be different for your environment.

  1. Skip this step, if you have the most recent fix pack applied. To get the latest updates for the wizard, apply the most recent CF. For more information about applying the latest fix pack, see Apply Combined Cumulative Fix for more information.

  2. Access the Configuration wizard. Go to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.

If you are working with HCL Digital Experience version 8.5 or 9 at a software level prior to CF18, the wizard address is http://your_server:10200/ibm/wizard. After you install CF18, the configuration wizard is automatically adjusted to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.

There is a known issue with Chrome version 45 and later and the Configuration wizard. If you are experiencing difficulties, use a different browser to access the wizard.

  1. Log in to the Configuration wizard with the administrative ID for the configuration wizard profile, cw_profile.

If the language is not currently supported for the user interface, you might see the English version. For details about supported languages and the language codes for all of the HCL Portal user interfaces, see Language support.

  1. Select Set Up a Stand-alone Server > Database Transfer.

  2. Provide information about your environment.

  3. Save your configuration settings.

  4. Complete one of the following steps:

    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally

  5. To shorten your site URL for search engine optimization benefits, you can modify your context root and remove navigational state information from your URL by using the Modify Site URLs for Search Engine Optimization configuration option.

  6. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that your portal server works.

Enabling federated security

After you install your web experience, a default file-based repository is the available user registry. Depending on your requirements, you might need to enable a federated LDAP user registry.

Note

If you set Use Administrator IDs stored in your LDAP user registry to yes, the WebSphere® Application Server and HCL Portal user IDs and passwords are changed to the LDAP user ID and password. If you do not want to change both user IDs and passwords to match the LDAP user ID and password, set this value to no. After you configure your LDAP user registry, you can manually change the user IDs and passwords.

  1. Skip this step, if you have the most recent fix pack applied. To get the latest updates for the wizard, apply the most recent CF. For more information about applying the latest fix pack, visit Apply Combined Cumulative Fix.

  2. Access the Configuration Wizard. Go to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.

If you are working with HCL Digital Experience 8.5 or 9 at a software level prior to CF18, the wizard address is http://your_server:10200/ibm/wizard. After you install CF18, the configuration wizard is automatically adjusted to http://your_server:10200/hcl/wizard.

There is a known issue with Chrome version 45 and later and the Configuration wizard. If you experience difficulties, use a different browser to access the wizard.

  1. Log in to the Configuration wizard with the administrative ID for the configuration wizard profile, cw_profile.

If the language is not currently supported for the user interface, you might see the English version. For details on supported languages and the language codes for all of the HCL Portal user interfaces, see Language support.

  1. Select Set Up a Stand-alone Server > Enable Federated Security.

If you set Use Administrator IDs stored in your LDAP user registry to yes, the WebSphere Application Server and HCL Digital Experience user IDs and passwords are changed to the LDAP user ID and password. If you do not want to change both user IDs and passwords to match the LDAP user ID and password, set this value to no. After you configure your LDAP user registry, you can manually change the user IDs and passwords.

  1. Provide information about your environment.

  2. Save your configuration settings.

  3. Complete one of the following steps:

    • Click Download Files to run the steps remotely.
    • Click Run All Steps to run the steps locally.

  4. Log in to HCL Digital Experience to verify that your portal server works.

Tuning the servers in your environment

Tuning the servers is important for the performance of your portal environment. After installation and deployment, HCL Digital Experience is not tuned for a production environment. You database requires tuning for improved performance. You can organize your database now or soon after you finish your configuration. You must tune and maintain your database regularly.

  • Run the performance tuning tool to complete the initial tuning of your servers.

Change to developer mode

Change your stand-alone server to developer mode to improve startup performance.