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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T17:27:48+00:00

I’m designing a website using PHP and MySQL currently and as the site proceeds

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I’m designing a website using PHP and MySQL currently and as the site proceeds I find myself adding more and more columns to the users table to store various variables.

Which got me thinking, is there a better way to store this information? Just to clarify, the information is global, can be affected by other users so cookies won’t work, also I’d lose the information if they clear their cookies.

The second part of my question is, if it does turn out that storing it in a database is the best way, would it be less expensive to have a large number of columns or rather to combine related columns into delimited varchar columns and then explode them in PHP?

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In my experience, I’d rather get the database right than start adding comma separated fields holding multiple items. Having to sift through multiple comma separated fields is only going to hurt your program’s efficiency and the readability of your code.

    Also, if your table is growing to much, then perhaps you need to look into splitting it into multiple tables joined by foreign dependencies?

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