Help for a database newbie

[lanche]

Hello All,

I need some assistance from the wizened veterans here.

I have used FrontPage for over 6 years. I recently bought Dreamweaver, and I'm trying to make the jump to using a database in some of my web sites. I have just bought XP Professional and Microsoft Access to have at my disposal, and I am slowly fumbling my way into creating a database(s) that will contain the information I need.

I'll tell you what I'm trying to accomplish and maybe you can tell me the easiest way to get there. I don't know programming and code, which is causing me much grief. I've bought several books in the last 2 weeks, for Java, Javascript, Access, Dreamweaver, XML, and none of them is helping to spell out for a layman what I'm trying to do. I'm about to move my webs sites from a server with a Linux platform to a windows platform with FrontPage extensions. My new hosting company says it will support the following:

"Our Windows based servers run Microsoft Windows 2003 as their operating system and do allow for ASP and ASP.NET scripting as well as Perl, PHP and CGI. We also offer MDSE data hosting with the ASP.NET platform. And we can install the ASP.NET starter kits upon request at no extra charge. "

I have a few mortgage web sites. I want to be able to create a database of lenders that has basic contact information about them that can then be dynamically displayed on my home page for site visitors. Going a step further, I want the lenders to have the ability to login in with a password through a browser and update any of their information without having access to the other lenders info on the site and have it update real time; with the lender with the most recent information displaying first, the second most recent next, etc.

Needless to say, I am completely lost. Coming from a WYSIWYG backround, trying to decipher all this programming is impossible. I was so frustrated yesterday I almost gave up. The books I have are very general about setting up local servers, setting up a DSN, loading scripts, etc.

Can anyone give me some pointers if there is a simple way I can teach myself how to do this? I don't have the resources to hire a database programmer. I thought setting this information to display in my web sites would be easier but I'm in completely over my head.

Is there a way to do what I'm looking for with just FrontPage, MS Access, and Dreamweaver?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Scott

[rdavidson20]

You are limited to very basic of asp-database concepts with a WYSIWYG page creators like Frontpage and Dreamweaver. I hate to tell you, but in order to do your User account login and password varification you will need to learn some scripting. As far as users being able to input data to a database and displaying it from that database is very simple and can be done with Frontpage. Here is an example of a site that i built all in Frontpage that allows teachers to input assignments, links, resources, ect for public viewing. Is this kinda what you want to do?

Virtual Whiteboard (http://www.splendoraisd.org/vwb/searchclass.asp)

[bud]

Scott, welcome to the Forum...

I do have several examples on setting up both a DSN-Less and DSN data connections with FrontPage.

See the pages under Database in my WorkShop (http://frontpage.kmoraine.com/WorkShop/)

Also for creating secure pages see the sections on Secure Pages

And yes you will need to get into the script, but I do have it setup as a step by step kind of thing.

Let me know if it helps.