Hello everyone, I'm really hoping there is a much easier solution for what I'd like to do...would appreciate any help whatsoever, and I have done little work towards this, so feel free to point me in an entirely different direction.

I have a very simple database that I plan to build(15 or so fields, all text). This db could get very large(upwards towards 100k records). I would like to publish the records and a very generic search page. This search page would of course be similar to any other multi-field search page online. I need the search result page to show just a few of the fields, with some way to of course access the complete record.

I have filemaker and it's IWP approach involves other people logging into my computer(or a server), that sorts through the database for them, etc. I was hoping to avoid this aspect, as the webpage does not need to be changed outside of my computer, and can be uploaded as static.

I see quite a few php and asp databases that seemingly serve this purpose, but I don't know a thing about them and I worry I might be overcomplicating things....

Again, this is a VERY simple database, with very simple records, and I just want a simple, multi-field search page so that I can send a link and someone can search through the static information present.

I would love to hear ideas or concerns, as I am very new to this.

Thanks in advace.

First off, I am no expert on this.

If you are going to have more than 100 people accessing the database at a time, IWP is not going to cut it in anycase. That is the limitation. It is great for limited access and I have used it on projects where the client wants vistiors to be able to log into the database and see limited information without having FileMaker.

You say that you really do not want your FMP server functioning to the outside world anyway.

You can make your FMP database output static pages for you. Then you can update the whole site at will. You can then use a standard host with a LAMP, WAMP or MAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP or Windows or Macintosh as the first word) to serve the pages. You would need someone to program the web database back end, probably using MySQL and PHP and to host it.

This would put you inthe position of using fairly standard technology available locally for the web site.

Alternately, FMP server/server advanced can be set up in a stack with PHP or Lasso as an intermediary, serving the database records live. FM WebSchool has a PHP plug in to automate PHP code. There are companies that host FMP web sites. I have not checked but I am sure there are adds for them on this site. Point In Space comes to mind. They would serve your files to the net from their servers.

I am sure that there are people on this forum with a far greater knowledge of this than me and who can make "gentle corrections" if I have mistakenly put in some erroneous information. :-)

Depending on your knowledge base, some or all of this may not be a "roll your own" project. Hopefully this sets out how one might divide it up.

If you have server 9 you could use the PHP assistant to generate a page like this...