>In these particular situations, I would expect them to use one of the inexpensive hosting companies (FawCow or something similar) that will host their domain name, handle their email, etc. All they are after is 1) email and 2) being able to update their simple site in a quick manner from within my application (as an example of a small restuarant: perhaps they have a BBQ dinner featured tonight, so they wish to quickly change from last's nite Fish Fry to BBQ tonight). This type of thing is the extent of what they want to do at this point.
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>>Are these users going to browse somewhere and fill out some information and publish it? Or is this something else?<
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>Basically, I would like them to be able to fill out a few Forms within a VFP app, and then be able to publish that data in HTML to their site. (I am using the word "Publish" somewhat loosely because of my FrontPager background). I just know in these situations that FrontPage is a little overkill for what I am thinking about.
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>There will be no forms filled out online from the simple site.Mel,
If they are being hosted somewhere else, they probably won't be able to install VFP runtimes. I would therefore use, for simplicity's sake (and cost reduction too), a simple ASP+VBS approach (not ASP.Net which has a steeper learning curve for you plus may not be yet supported by the web-hosting company). For them to use it they do not have to learn anything really as your form could cover everything as follows:
Create a set of simple ASP pages with your favorite design tool (Frontpage, DreamWeaver, Notepad or even VFP's text editor). All you need is to create simple text files with ASP extension that use ASP+VBS.
Add a series of placeholders in the HTML code where you would plug in a simple JScript function to go get an XML string, and post it in that spot.
It would look like:< HTML >
< HEAD >
JScript function to read and parse XML using the XMLDOM goes here.
< /HEAD >
< BODY >
some fixed text and graphics to make it look nice
then at some point the placeholders like:
This is the menu for the day:< br >
< %=GetXML("SpecialOfTheDay") % >
more hardcoded text, etc.
< /BODY >
< /HTML >(Note: spaces have been added to avoid parsing of HTML tags)
Then your form would ask for them to enter the text, even giving them some help or buttons to make some text bold, or whatever (similar to the easy-to-use edit-box that eBay uses to let newbies create a web page when listing items for auction).
When done, all your program has to do is convert their text to XML with the proper tags ("SpecialOfTheDay" as in the example) and FTP to the server.
If you do not know how to FTP directly from VFP, it is very simple, just ask or look at the UT downloads section where I believe there are some samples.
HTH
