Veteran's Association Needs HELP with database selection.

[LouisAZ]

All,



I represent a military veteran's association with approx. 150 members. We are in the process of converting our site from a very unfriendly program to WordPress and s2 (a membership plugin for WP to control access and on-line applications, etc.). So far, like both programs very much.

Because as we are a "membership" website we need to integrate our current SQL database into something that can be easily queried by Members and Administrators. Microsoft Access appears to be just what we are looking for.

We have 3 levels of access -- Public, Members, and Administrators. FYI, Our server host is Bluehost.

QUESTIONS:

1. Can we use Access 2013 to create a few simple queries that Members (not the public) can use to search our membership by "name" "city" and "expiration date"? [Our membership is spread throughout our state and in several adjoining states.]

2. Can the Access queries be designed so that what the Members see (in various sorts of the membership database) can also by them in a PDF?

3. Are there any serious "issues" integrating Access with WP and s2?

4. Can we Administrators move our Access (SQL) database to our website server and edit it from our home-based PCs using Access?

I apologize for such basic questions, but I'm new to Access and would very much appreciate the opinions of experienced users.

Thanks,

Louis

[NTC]

The reason that no one has replied to your post is that you are mixing together classic (non web) Access questions with web questions - along with questions on other products such as WordPress which are not the core competency of this forum.

sql is a generic language & format; while SQL Server is a Microsoft product. there are other brands of sql servers such as MySQL.

Classic Access requires either the license (full or run time) and is not browser based. This is the main stream installation used widely throughout business. It is primarily on-premise only however Access 2013 with a 360 account will now allow the data tables to be held in the cloud.

Web Access must be run on the Microsoft SharePoint product. Office 360 is a sharepoint environment. It will not host on a generic sql server hosting service. The Access tables can be moved to an sql server - however at that time they are no longer an Access product.

If WordPress can use an Access database as its data tables - that is entirely a WordPress feature set and has nothing to do with Access per se. There is no explicit integration from the Access product.

I do not consider Web Access to be suitable for any 'public facing' web application. It can be suitable for 'closed user group' applications (i.e. employees) but in any case has a significantly limited customization capability - essentially you get what you get.

If you are using WordPress then this is your web development application and what you seek then are tables to drive it - and should not also need Web Access as it is duplicative in terms of a web interface development environment.

Rather than manage the components to create a web application you could alternatively consider a web service such as: QuickBase, ParaSQL, Soho, Knack.