Instant Web Publishing Guide

Chapter 2
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Publishing your database on the web 13
Disconnecting inactive web accounts
You can specify the amount of time web users remain connected to the database when their session, or
connection to the web server, is idle. Sessions are considered idle when web users do not submit requests
from the web browser, such as finding, creating, or submitting changes, changing layouts, and so on. A
session also becomes idle when the web user closes the web browser window, moves to another web site, or
quits the web browser without clicking the Log Out button.
To specify the duration that a session can be idle before it times out:
1. Open the Instant Web Publishing dialog box (see “Sharing a database with Instant Web Publishing” on
page 9).
2. For Advanced Options, click Specify.
3. For Disconnect inactive accounts, specify the amount of time before disconnecting idle web users (from
1 to 60 minutes), then click OK to save the changes.
If you are concerned that web users might not log out of the database properly, specify a short session time
out. You can also create a scripted button to automatically log web users off. See
“Creating a script to log
out of a database and close the session” on page 37 and “Logging out of a database and closing a web
session” on page 23 for more information.
Linking to a database from an HTML page
Instead of having web users type the IP address or domain name to access your database, you can create an
HTML page that specifies a link to your databases.
Keep these points in mind:
1 If you close your files frequently, or if web users access a number of databases, consider linking to the
Database Homepage, which dynamically creates links for all databases that are open and shared with
Instant Web Publishing. For more information on the Database Homepage, see
“Accessing a FileMaker
database on the web” on page 18.
1 The link you provide can access a database and show the default layout. If additional functionality is
desired, consider including a startup script in the database that automates the desired tasks.
1 If possible, host the databases on a static IP address or use a domain name. In some environments, a new
IP address is assigned dynamically to a computer every time it reconnects to the network.
1 The URL syntax for linking to a particular database is different than FileMaker Pro 6 and earlier, so you
must update the link after converting the file.
1 If you’re hosting files with FileMaker Pro, you can store the static HTML pages and any accompanying
images in the Web folder inside the FileMaker
Pro folder.
To view this Use this link
Database Homepage or a homepage
you create
If the database is hosted with FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Pro Advanced:
http://<IP address>:<Port number>
If the database is hosted with FileMaker Server Advanced:
http://<IP address>:<Port number>/fmi/iwp/
A particular database http://<IP address>:<Port number>/fmi/iwp/
cgi?-db=<database name>&-loadframes