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Publishing databases on the web

With FileMaker Pro, you can share your database with users in a web browser, allowing them to find, browse, and modify data.

•	Use Instant Web Publishing to quickly and easily publish the layouts you design in FileMaker as web pages. Create layouts for FileMaker Pro users and web users, with the same design tools.

•	Use FileMaker Pro scripting with web publishing to automate simple tasks, such as finding records, or automate more complex tasks using the “web-compatible” set of FileMaker script steps. See Creating scripts to automate tasks for more information.

•	Use Accounts and Privileges to control the security of your database. See Protecting databases for more information.

Instant Web Publishing is available from FileMaker Pro, which includes all the software you need to publish your database as web pages within a local network or intranet. With an internet connection (typically provided through an Internet Service Provider) and an IP address, you can publish to internet users on the World Wide Web.

When hosted with FileMaker Pro, Instant Web Publishing can share files with up to five concurrent web users. For greater networking performance and capacity, use FileMaker Server Advanced, which supports Instant Web Publishing, Custom Web Publishing, and other sharing options.

To publish databases on the web:

1.	Open the database files.

2.	Choose File menu > Sharing > Instant Web Publishing to open the Instant Web Publishing dialog box and enable Instant Web Publishing.

3.	Select the filename to publish on the web from the list of open files.

4.	Choose which users can access the file:

 

Choose this	To provide access to these users
All users	Anyone who has the IP address or domain name of your computer hosting the database. If the Guest account is enabled and has the Instant Web Publishing privilege set enabled, web users open the database without being prompted for an account name and password when opening files.
Specify users by privilege set	Allows select users access to the database. Users must enter their account name and password defined in Accounts and Privileges.
No users	This default setting prevents any user from accessing the database with Instant Web Publishing.

5.	Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each database you want to publish.

6.	Click OK or choose additional settings.

Tip  Select Don’t display in Instant Web Publishing homepage in the Instant Web Publishing dialog box to suppress a filename from appearing in the built-in Instant Web Publishing Database Homepage. This is useful if your solution includes multiple files and you don’t want all the filenames displayed.

Notes

•	The FileMaker Pro Log in using <account name> feature in the File Options dialog box does not work when accessing files from the web.

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Web users can open databases without specifying a password if you set up the Guest account for web access: in FileMaker Pro, enable the Guest account and assign it a privilege set that has the Access via Instant Web Publishing extended privilege. See About the Admin and Guest accounts for information on enabling the Guest account for Instant Web Publishing.

•	For more detailed information about FileMaker Pro web publishing (including information on accessing published databases in a web browser), see the online manual, FileMaker Instant Web Publishing Guide, which is located in the folder where FileMaker Pro is installed.