Custom home page???

[ibiubu]

Using FileMaker 5.5 to serve up our database. Of course when I go to the web address...Standard default FileMaker home page that contains the link to continue on to the database. Can this page layout be redesigned? If so, where do I place the page that I design so it will replace the default layout? And what do I name it?

[Hammerton]

Larry - There are two ways of putting FM databases on-line. One is called instant web publishing. Using this method all you have to do is point your browser to the machine with filemaker on it and it will show the available databses and give the visitor a couple options for viewing the data. I don not believe that you have any options about the default page.

The method favored by almost everyone on this forum is custom web publishing, which lets you design your own web pages and use them to interface with your database. Custom web publishing uses a small set of simple code, called CDML, though which the browser talks to the database. There is a folder called CDML tools that came with your FMP5.5. In it there is a reference to CDML, and some examples. Using the examples you can get your own database online in about 30 minutes. I encourage you to take a little up front time to learn this method. It's uses are almost limitless, whereas for instant web publishing, it's limits make it useless.

[Keith M. Davie]

"Using the examples you can get your own database online in about 30 minutes."

You may however find that you spend the next 30 days trying to figure out why certain things aren't working right, why you get duplicate records, why your ScriptMaker scripts are in danger, why the -op tag and -lop tags don't always work without JavaScript, etc, etc. etc.

You realistically should expect to spend a lot more time than 30 minutes.

There are some 11 pages of just thread titles going back to June 2000 in this forum alone. They reflect many of the problems which people have encountered in their 30 minutes to on-line success.

[ March 10, 2002, 08:49 PM: Message edited by: Keith M. Davie ]

[ibiubu]

Thanks for the advice. I think I will give the Custom method a try. I did find where to change the default home page in instant web publishing. It was buried in the documentation and was a bit hard to find, but I found it.

LR

[ibiubu]

30 minutes...I know what you mean. Did some playing with Custom Web pages over the weekend. Definately a lot more customizable. But with instant I got everything to work the way I wanted for what I needed in 15 minutes or so.

Instant will work just great for me...just need one thing to work. I know how to have a login page come up first (this is the default layout in my filemaker database). It has a login filed and a button for submit. I just want the user to type in a user name that corresponds to a field in another layout in my database, hit the submit button, and go to the other layour and to the specific record with the matching field.

Just cant quite figure out how to do this. Maybe the submit button could perform some sort of script that does a find?

LR