Our jurisdiction is exploring options on providing public access to certain information within Filemaker.  We do not have a PHP designer on staff, and the third party estimates we are getting for this work has been quite a bit higher than we anticipated.

I will likely be leading this project for the foreseeable future, (I am the in house FM coordinator), with almost zero web development experience. 

My question:  is WebDirect an option I should even consider, given it's limitations? 

We have a CMS website developed and hosted by a third party, and our IS department is on board with helping in anyway they can.  I know that WebDirect is not a long term solution, due to the concurrent use license cost and limitations (50 users) - but it seems that it might allow me to do a "proof of concept" fairly quickly, find out how citizens use the service, and then we might just be able to justify the costs for full development.

Thoughts?

Developing a prototype in WebDirect is fine. I'd be really cautious about using it for any kind of public-facing website, though.

I've setup a few survey/questionnaires using WebDirect.  Our expectation of use is very low, because people would only be accessing our WD site if we invited them to do so.  The setup time is minimal, and works great for our needs, because we can accept the few limitations it has.

How much usage do you expect to get from this?  If you setup security properly, I wouldn't worry about hacking/breaking.  I would be more worried about how much of a strain this will put on your server(s), and how resilient the page(s) will be.

Developing a prototype in WebDirect is fine. I'd be really cautious about using it for any kind of public-facing website, though.

​Curious: can you elaborate on this? Thanks!

My main concern would be the concurrent user limitation. Now that FM14 has increased it to 100, it's a little less concerning.

A secondary concern is the inability to seamlessly link WD into an existing site.

Lack of Firefox support is also a #facepalm.

Don't get me wrong -- I plan to do some WD projects this year. It's very cool. You just want to be aware of what you're getting into.

Thank you for clarifying. I thought it had something to do with security concerns in relation to deep linking or other issues.

PS: 100 connections is really a question of marketing and licensing. And I'm not too happy about it, because, combined with the recent price hikes, it makes "unlimited" WebDirect pretty much unaffordable.

Edited June 3, 201510 yr by artvault

100 connections is a real technical limitation, it's not just a marketing/licensing issue.

I sympathize with the cost of connections. OTOH, I sympathize with FMI's need to make a profit, painful as it might be.

Oh! I was not aware of that. Thank you for pointing it out. So 100 connections is the new "unlimited" which is now officially available for purchase. Makes sense.