Currently we produce a paper catalogue using filemaker.  It's not ideal, 
but it's the best solution given what's available and the skill set we 
have.  It works OK, we have a lot of effort inveseted in it, and I am 
not going to throw it away.  We plan to keep this up to date, as 
products change.



I would like a web shop.  I want something that looks good, but we don't 
really have the skills in house to do anything very clever ourselves. 
At the Moment I am considering OS Commerce - it seems a good way of 
getting a very functional e-commerce site without having to do too much 
work.


My question is, how do I get all my product information from filemaker 
into the web shop, so I have the same product data both on paper and on 
the web.

A batch process like text export / import won't work - experience tells 
me this is too difficult, I need more of a live link.

For OS commerce, how does it store all the product data, and how might I 
get data from one to the other?

Alternatively, someone will tel me to do it all with FMP and web 
publishing.  I'm aware that this is a theoretical posibility, and it 
solves the data transfer problems, but it's not top of my list because:
  - Web shops based on FMP just aren't that common, and that worries me. 
  Whay aren't they more popular if it is a good solution?
  - I am assuming I will have to do more work myself than I am willing 
to do.  Unless someone can point me in the direction of a ready made FMP 
based web shop
  - what to do about hosting?  We don't have the bandwidth to host it 
ourselves.  Paying for a co-located server would be too expensive, so I 
would have to find someone offering filemaker hosting (in the UK). 
There must be someone out there, but it just deosn't seem a popular 
choice, and that worries me!

I'm sure some of you must have been here before, any advice / experience 
greatly appreciated.

Hello

If you invested some much time and money you should consider
to use IWP (instant web publishing).
It's best to use the filemaker 8 version for that purpose.

For web hosting, visit www.fmhost.net

In terms of webshop in fact  and I guess, that there are so many 
existing solutions that developers don't see it's worth the trip.
It's my guess !

Phil

bye




Luke Siemaszko wrote:

> Currently we produce a paper catalogue using filemaker.  It's not ideal, 
> but it's the best solution given what's available and the skill set we 
> have.  It works OK, we have a lot of effort inveseted in it, and I am 
> not going to throw it away.  We plan to keep this up to date, as 
> products change.
> 
> 
> 
> I would like a web shop.  I want something that looks good, but we don't 
> really have the skills in house to do anything very clever ourselves. At 
> the Moment I am considering OS Commerce - it seems a good way of getting 
> a very functional e-commerce site without having to do too much work.
> 
> 
> My question is, how do I get all my product information from filemaker 
> into the web shop, so I have the same product data both on paper and on 
> the web.
> 
> A batch process like text export / import won't work - experience tells 
> me this is too difficult, I need more of a live link.
> 
> For OS commerce, how does it store all the product data, and how might I 
> get data from one to the other?
> 
> Alternatively, someone will tel me to do it all with FMP and web 
> publishing.  I'm aware that this is a theoretical posibility, and it 
> solves the data transfer problems, but it's not top of my list because:
>  - Web shops based on FMP just aren't that common, and that worries me. 
>  Whay aren't they more popular if it is a good solution?
>  - I am assuming I will have to do more work myself than I am willing to 
> do.  Unless someone can point me in the direction of a ready made FMP 
> based web shop
>  - what to do about hosting?  We don't have the bandwidth to host it 
> ourselves.  Paying for a co-located server would be too expensive, so I 
> would have to find someone offering filemaker hosting (in the UK). There 
> must be someone out there, but it just deosn't seem a popular choice, 
> and that worries me!
> 
> I'm sure some of you must have been here before, any advice / experience 
> greatly appreciated.
> 

Luke Siemaszko wrote:
> Currently we produce a paper catalogue using filemaker.  It's not ideal, 
> but it's the best solution given what's available and the skill set we 
> have.  It works OK, we have a lot of effort inveseted in it, and I am 
> not going to throw it away.  We plan to keep this up to date, as 
> products change.
> 
hi,
I've tackled this one and it isn't simple especially when you have idiot 
web designers involved.

Anyway, what I did as export a small sample of the product list and sent 
it to the designer.

They came back with a page design that was OK.

I then cut all the html in between the product data and inserted it into 
a field with respect to its position in the document. eg price;code 
field;item name;code field 2 etc etc

After some tweeking I managed to get it to work, including pics that 
were on the webserver, all generated out of FM.

It's a bit messy and a bit tricky but can be done.

Remember, html is only text. Bits of this are repeated for each record.

Try that,
Noel

If you would like to see a great way to bring your FileMaker solution
to the web as a shopping cart system, you might want to check out
FXCart http://www.fmwebschool.com/fxcart.php   FXCart connects to
PayPal, Authorize.net and Verisign.  There are movies as well as to how
it works.

In Kindness
Stephen K Knight