My publisher instance was running in author mode because i mis-labeled the jar as aem-publisher-p4503.jar. I had to rebuild the crx-quickstart repository with the correct .jar name to ensure it runs in publisher mode. I verified this by going to http://publisher.ip:4503/system/console/status-slingse...

@DPrakashRaj , in that case, how do I disable the the AEM login page for webpages for the http://localhost:4503/content/ directory on the publisher instance?

That's what I'm led to believe too, the dispatcher alone can't server pages if it's not allowed from publisher. For the purposes of pushing the work forward, I'm going to serve the publisher pages without requiring authentication and if any follow-up to the original question comes up I can try it in...

I fixed the dict.en,json and userinfo.json errors by adding folder path exceptions to the filter list in the dispatcher.any file according to this link https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-dispatcher/using/getting-started/security-checklist.html and then I fixed the SearchAsset...

In the network developer tools I found the dict.en.json, userinfo.json are 404'ing on https://localhost/content/xyz/en/webpage.html  but they're all green on http://localhost:4503/content/xyz/en/webpage.html

Are there any logs I can look at and identify the content being blocked when loading the SSL webpage?

I had the same problem. You need to start OSGI on port 4502 and upload the SSL configuration there. You were most likely trying to upload the SSL configuration on port 8080.

For making the AEM instance public, I've been trying to find out how to publish the .JAR instance (the quickstart.jar file) to the internet. It looks like I need to convert it into a .WAR file and use Tomcat + IIS. Otherwise I haven't found great results. Can you recommend platforms that I can look ...

Where can I find the documentation on how to do that?