Snookey,
I think I understand what you're looking for here, and it is pretty simple to do.
First, decide if your "view only" users are going to all have their own accounts, or if they're going to use the "default" settings ("default" isn't a user perse', but a DBMan setting in the default.cfg file.)
Next, create an account for the person(s) that is going to have the administrative (read/write/modify/delete) functions; if you have the original settings of DBMan still, you would do this by logging in as username "admin"/password "admin", going into Admin, and adding a new user with all the permissions you want them to have.
Finally is the matter of accessing the site using different account types. I have a HTML web page that everyone can search from (view only). You can give people access to view your database a couple different ways:
1) external search page: Assuming you're using the "default" access settings, create an HTML page outside of DBMan, with whatever search fields you would like. For largely text databases, providing just a keyword and/or a boolean search field (requires the boolean mod in the Resource Center) should be enough. Your HTML page would look something like this:
Code:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Search the Database</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Please enter your search criteria, and press ENTER:<BR>
</-- Start KEYWORD search form -->
<FORM ACTION="/http://path/to/db.cgi" METHOD="GET">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="uid" VALUE="default">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="db" VALUE="default">
Keyword (exact phrase): <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="keyword">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="view_records" value="1">
</FORM>
<BR>
</-- Start BOOLEAN search form -->
</-- Leave the following form out if you're not using the boolean MOD -->
<FORM ACTION="/http://path/to/db.cgi" METHOD="GET">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="uid" VALUE="default">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="db" VALUE="default">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="bool" VALUE="and">
Boolean (multiple words): <INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="keyword">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="view_records" value="1">
</FORM>
</BODY>
</HTML>
2) internal search page: again if you are using the "default" access settings, you can provide a link directly to dbman's internal search form:
Code:
<A HREF="http://path/to/db.cgi?uid=default&db=default&view_search=1">Search the Database</A>
Your administrator will probably need all the menu options right at their fingertips. For them, give them a link directly to the dbman script with their username and password, like this:
Code:
<A HREF="http://path/to/db.cgi?db=default&uid=
their username&pw=
their password&login=1">Admin Login</A>
* For security purposes, you might want to consider putting the admin login into a bookmark/favorites link instead of an A HREF link in a web page in order to keep everyone else but the right person/people out of your database.
Lastly, if you decide to give everyone a seperate account to view the database with, the easiest thing to do is either make them all bookmark/favorites like the one above, or simply provide a link to the login page:
Code:
<A HREF="http://path/to/db.cgi">Access the Database</A>
* If you use both of the cookie mods in the Resource Center, your users won't have to enter their username and password on the login screen (it will remember their login and password for them), and they won't have to log into the database more than once per session (it will remember their login session until they close their browser).
I hope this helps you!
--Lee
[This message has been edited by leisurelee (edited April 22, 2000).]
