I would like to publish a database on the Web. I have many questions about details of this, but for now, I have created a test database, and want to try out the Web Companion to see how it works. I enable the Web companion checkbox, and go through the sharing setup according to everything I have read, and when I go to my Web Folder, inside my Filemaker folder, there is only the read me file in there. What needs to be done or what am I doing wrong?

You need to configure Web Companion to use "Instant Web Publishing" for FMP to automatically display your database on the web. Instant has its limitation, for instance you have little control over how the shared database looks, fancy layouts will not necessarily translate well and buttons stop working. But it is easy.

The Web folder that you refer to is where you put html files that *you* create to dsiplay the pages. This is called "custom" web publishing, and it involved learning CDML markup language as well as HTML to interface your databases to the web. It is vastly more flexible and powerful than instant publishing, but a correspondingly larger amount of work is involved.

Thank you for your reply! How do I view what instant web publishing is providing then?

My eventual goal for this project is to serve a large database of information, that will be in continual growth and change. I wish to have visitors to the site able to view by select categories or perform searches. The database needs to be able to link to addtional information by clicking on a button within a field ( to deliver expanded information about a particular field). Just creating the database has been a daunting task. Now I am unsure how the delivery end should proceed.

Do I create a web site that somehow links to my database on my home computer (I have a DSL connection so I think that *may* be possible)?

I don't think that just exporting my categories as html and then working them into pages is the way to go, as I can't see how to maintain embedded links when I make a change to the database. Where do I start?

Alan