We’ve had a love/hate relationship with FileMaker WebDirect ever since it replaced the venerable Instant Web Publishing.
However, we’ve come to appreciate WebDirect and how well it supports advanced deployments. That point was driven home for me recently when we fixed how WebDirect routes around unresponsive workers, something that I mentioned here.
Scaling Horizontally
WebDirect is the only part of the Claris platform that you can scale horizontally, adding more capacity by adding more workers – up to 10 of them. Obviously, you would want to scale dynamically: use fewer worker servers when there is less load and more when there is more demand. We figured out how to do this effectively and it is one of the benefits available in our Soliant.cloud hosting environment.
Oh, and when we say the “only part that can scale horizontally,” we hope to see more of that. In our lab environments we already can do that for Data API workers and even FMSE (scripting engine: schedules and PSoS) workers. Yes, we’re that good.
Deciding to Leverage FileMaker WebDirect
The decision to build and deploy a FileMaker solution through WebDirect is always based on several factors. A real-life journey through that decision and its execution is told really well in our recent series of blog posts on the topic.
The more critical the deployment, the more important its uptime is. Knowing how to troubleshoot is then equally critical. Explore our invaluable insights into the inner workings of WebDirect here.
Security Concerns
Since most FileMaker WebDirect deployments require access through the internet, some serious thought must be given to how to do that in the most secure way possible. Often, companies attempt to put a worker server in a DMZ and the main FileMaker Server behind the firewall, but they find that it is difficult to pull off.
Fortunately, it is quite simple to keep all of FileMaker Server and workers safely behind the firewall and use an Nginx reverse proxy that is accessible from the internet. It’s one of the lesser-known features available in WebDirect.
Customizing the Login Experience
Also, strangely flying below the radar is that you can completely customize the login experience; you do not have to live with the default landing page and login page. Learn how to do that if you are using an external identity provider and want to provide a seamless login experience for your users. If you use native FileMaker accounts, you can do the same, just through a different setup, which we share in these two blogs as well.
Making Web-viewers Work in FileMaker WebDirect
From a functionality point of view, one of the challenges with WebDirect is how to make web-viewers work. When you use a web-viewer, that becomes an iFrame inside the WebDirect web page, and with that comes a different category of considerations. We navigate those considerations in another blog post here.
Implementing FileMaker WebDirect
An effective and scalable implementation of FileMaker WebDirect requires extensive knowledge of the platform,. Whether you’re planning a new WebDirect deployment or looking to enhance an existing one, our team delivers years of experience solving complex FileMaker challenges. Reach out to our FileMaker experts today to discuss your specific needs and how we can help you build a robust, scalable, and secure WebDirect solution.
