I’m using FMP 9 Advanced and I've converted some of my solutions to SM with success. Now I'm being asked to have a solution hosted on the web using one of the FileMaker Web providers like “dbdom”. I've never built a FileMaker solution for the Web and hope you could answer a few questions for me.

We expect up to 200 simultaneous users who will select 3 to 5 subjects (out of maybe 175) to read and then vote Yes or No on the ones they selected.

I just have a couple questions and the first one is would you use a separation model for this? The other has to do with layouts. I know with scripting I need to click on the “Indicate web compatibility” so I only get the script steps that can be used on the web. But are there also things I need to know about layouts? I would like to use a solution i've already developed if I can.

As I said, I’ve not done it before and expect I’ll make mistakes; I’d just like to stay away from the real big ones if I can.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

James

Are you aware of the user limitations?

100 web clients plus 250 FMP clients. (concurrent)

There are lots of issues regarding web publishing layouts - see the documentation that came with FMP 9. There's quite a bit more on the FM website too. (I'm assuming you're thinking INSTANT web publishing).

dbdom offers FileMaker Server 9 Advanced so I would be limited to the following right?

The FileMaker web site says

Networking: TCP/IP; limited to 250 simultaneous FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced client connections; each FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced client requires a licensed copy of FileMaker Pro/Pro Advanced 7, 8.x or 9.

Instant Web Publishing: A host computer with continuous access to the Internet or intranet via TCP/IP can manage up to 100 simultaneous Instant Web Publishing sessions.

So based on the above it would seem I'd go the direction of TCP/IP right?

Something else I don't quite get is the quote from above "client requires a licensed copy of FileMaker Pro". People going to this site will not be FileMaker user, they will just be people going to a web site. What am I missing here?

James

Perhaps think of it this way: client computers within your organisation connecting to the server will do so over the LAN, and will be connecting via FileMaker Server 'normal' sharing, and each client computer will require a licensed copy of FMP. People using the client computers will have configured accounts in the database (or be using guest).

The rest of the world can connect via the WAN to the (parallel configuration) Web Sharing served database without having FileMaker Pro on their box, and without having a user account in the database.