Experiences with IWP So Far.

[Sam Laundon]

First, I want to thank those who unselfishly give help and information on this forum. Without their help I would not have gotten anywhere.

My company is SmilePix:

We are entirely internet driven so a smooth running database is critical. Our clients are dentist who send us photographs through the web (or email) of their patients that our artists retouch to improve a cosmetic look.

Everything is database driven from the dentists placing orders, uploading photos, viewing past orders and making comments on their orders.

Presently, I am still using FM 6 Unlimited and publishing to the web with CDML. It works fine and has so for a couple of years now. In the beginning of the year I began the arduous process of converting 10 files into one FM 7 table.

Why IWP?

When FileMaker made the mistake of only allowing 5 records to load in IWP, I started look at other solutions, mostly PHP. Once they corrected their error and now allow 25 records to be viewed, IWP looked like a more viable solution. As I have worked with it I have come across many features (and lack of features) that are frustrating and required work-a-rounds. Even with these limitations, the potential is powerful. The most important for me is not having to use a bridge from the database to the web like CDML or PHP. All that needs to be done is create layouts specifically for web publishing. No php, no lasso, no xml. All languages that give me nightmares because I am not a FM developer or programer. Yes, the limitations are frustrating, but I can see down the road that this a powerful tool and the next version will hopefully address them and add more features.

Problems and solutions (maybe some readers have better solutions)

1. The first problem was how to get my clients into IWP. With CDML I used their last name and a password. This would not work with IWP because I could only collect their AccountName not password. So I went with their email address, but learned that the "@" was not going to work in a find. The solution was to create a calculation field that stripped out the "@" and this works fine.

2. The second problem I am still working on which is changing the default page so it shows my company name and logo and not FileMaker's. As I said I am not a programer. All I did was create a copy so I would not lose the original and experimented with deleting and adding text and images. Right now I am stuck with the title to the window being "FileMaker Instant Web Publishing", instead of my company name. There is html <title></title>, and I put SmilePix there, but when the page loads my company name on shows for half a second before it changes to "FileMaker Instant Web Publishing". Any one have any ideas on how to fix this?

3. Uploading photos through the browser: Because I am using FM Server Advanced, I learned that I was unable to use the Uploadit plugin. I was able to adapt a upload php script that I am presently using with FM 6 and CDML. Garry Glaridge (one of those FM Forum angles I mentioned earlier) was able to adapt incPureUpload.php so that it renamed the file to the patient's name when it was uploaded (it will upload two files).

4. I was not going to use IWP because of the 5 record list view limit. Now it is 25, but I want to be able to control how many records load on a web page and have not figured out how to do it, or if it can be done. I have a layout that shows thumbnails and having 25 records load takes to long. Portals don't work because unless their is a scroll bar, the unseen records can not be viewed. I posted a question on this forum earlier, but no answers were received. Can it be done?

5. Email notification when an order was placed was easy with FM 7 and CDML with the use of the plugin SMtPit, but again because of using Server Advanced I can not use this plugin, so again I had to resort to email by php, but am not entirely pleased with this solution. Anyone have any better solutions? Has anyone tried Events 4.0?

I am still working on this IWP solution and will not go live until I am absolutely sure everything works as planned. I would be happy to share any of my experiences and look forward to hearing creative solutions by others to their IWP problems.

thanks in advance - Sam

[alelie]

I've been using Events for 2 years. It rocks! If you have a serious firewall/spam tagger, you can't use it for email. SMTPit works well with it.

Otherwise you have your work cut out for you. If you are on Mac - From the FM Server folder, under web Publishing, under publishing Engine folder under wpc, right click on FM Web Publishing to Show Package Contents and edit Home Page. There is also a file called

[Sam Laundon]

Alelie - thanks for the suggestions. I will look into "strings.js" to do more default.html editing.

thanks - Sam