>I've been asked to develop my first web based application. (At least I think that's the right terminology.) The application will be used to deliver status information on a series of public improvement projects of interest to the community. Each project will have a few fields of data including name, description, schedule, status, etc. and perhaps a map showing the projects location. There may even be a few pictures showing construction as the projects progress.
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>There will be general public users who will view the site in read only mode, and there will be the project managers who will use the site to enter current status information as the projects progress.
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>My questions include:
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>What is the best technique to do this?
>Should I be looking at developing a COM object to act as a web server?
>Should the data be kept in native VFP tables?
>Should the web pages be designed in VFP and converted to HTML or is it easier to simply start with a good html editor like Frontpage or Coffee Cup?
>Is ASP pages the best way to go?
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>Etc.
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>Any advice or helpful suggestions will be appreciated.
>

I would suggest using ASP.NET for front end and VFP for database (since I guess your data is already in VFP). You can read data from VFP database using VFP Ole Db driver. In my applications I use combination of calling VFP Stored Procedures and ADO.

As far as designing web pages, I don't know if you can convert VFP to HTML but creating HTML pages is not that difficult. I code my HTML pages manually in the VS.NET. I try to use CSS and would suggest this approach. I am sure there are better ways of doing it (than by hand) (like Dreamweaver). I read somewhere that FrontPage maybe dropped from MSFT support so I would check it before using it.

HTH.