I am working with a computer that we have been using as a filemaker server for years. We have no problems sharing the databases over our internal network. I am now exploring the PHP in filemaker server 9. I am trying to enable web publishing. I select PHP in the list (along with XML and XSLT) and click continue from there I can chose the deployment type (single machine, two machines, three machines, etc.). When I click next it asks me to select a web server. The field is blank and there is nothing listed in the drop box.

I assume it is looking for a web server on my machine. I don't have one. I have a web server that is hosted by a professional company. I want to run my filemaker PHP off of a remote server.

I have uploaded the required files (the filemaker.php and Filemaker folder) as instructed by the manual PHP installation.

I may be completely missing something, or completely on the wrong track. PLEASE HELP!

AFAIK the web servers supported are IIS and Apache, and they must be located within the same network.

There are 3 components to FileMaker CWP - 2 of which require a web server.

Component 1: FileMaker Database Server

This component is the core database server, hosts your FileMaker database and processes requests when the Custom Web Publishing Engine (component 2) passes the requests to it.

Component 2: FileMaker Custom Web Publishing Engine

This is a component / software application package that sits on a server - it is an actual package that must be installed - it can technically sit outside of the network though you have to open a number of ports and performance may vary - it is also unlikely that you are going to be able to install it on your hosting provider [especially given how taxing the process can be on the CPU sometimes]. Additionally it must sit on either windows (IIS) or mac (apache).

Requests are passed to the nominated web server [iis / apache] which in turn pass those requests to the CWPE. The CWPE passes the request to FileMaker Database Server and constructs a response based on the information it get's back from the server. Once the response is constructed [in xml format], it forwards this back to the nominated web server which in turn passes that result back to the requesting entity [component 3].

Component 3: The Requesting Entity [normally a general web site]

This component is often installed along side component 2. Here, you utilize the FileMaker class (the FileMaker Folder and the FileMaker.php files) to construct XML based queries via Object Oriented Programming in PHP. Once the xml based query is constructed, it is sent to component 2 to be processed. The XML output that is returned by component 2 is then captured by the PHP class which in turn offers you a number of Object Oriented methods to deal with the response.

In Summary:

Basically, just install IIS on your server - it will just serve as a pass through for all your requests coming from your shared hosting environment [component 3 in this case].

Hope that clarifies to some extent...