FM Studio v. FM PHP Site Assistant

[djc728]

With the new FM PHP Site Assistant is there any benefit to getting FM Studio to create a website over just using the FM PHP Site Assistant? Would love to hear from a few users if possible.

Thanks.

Dom

[Genx]

Lol, I just took a look at the Site assistant.

Let me put it this way, if you need something extraordinarily simple, don't need much ability to customize the look, or how everything operates - go ahead with the php tool that fm provides (oh and it looks pretty too - has pictures and everything).

I'll admit some of the site generation is "pretty" but also that most of it is excessive, restrictive and uncustomizable... and i got 3 errors while trying to generate the site.

If you want to do the same sort of thing with FMStudio - they have a little option called "Site Builder" which will do pretty much the same thing.

The power of FM Studio however is not the little gimic where a site is designed for you in a few seconds - i mean would you trust FileMaker to build your database for you after a few simple questions?

The main purpose of FMStudio is to give you a level of customization - you get to specify the way everything looks, get to setup how your site operates, and anything else you'd want... but don't worry, there's no code involved and the process is mostly GUI based.

Its like FileMaker asking you a series of questions before coming up with a magically optimized database that would suite your every need.

I'll admit though, that it might be a good learning tool (from what i've seen however, they've overcomplicated the code in some parts - the actual api code is clear IF you know where you're to look).

Anyway point is - if you want a small generic site then use the PHP Site Assistant. If you want any control over anything really, use FM Studio.

[djc728]

Thank you very much -- that helps tremendously.