Question

Ok, I have built a custom CRM web app for a client using PHP and MySQL. The app seems to work really well for them and so I have decided to create a commercial version open to the public.

The basic idea of it is that it takes the data captured from a website and then populates the database with that. At the moment there is simply and insert statement on the front end of the website.

The thing is, I want people to be able to sign up to the service, create an account and customise it themselves to suit their needs. My idea is that once they sign up they would be provided with a form action that submitted to their account when installed on their page.

Regarding tables in the database etc, currently there is simply a customers table as there is only one website using it. If people being to sign up and use the service, do i create a new table for every account? This might be right but it seems a bit silly to me. Or is there a better way of going about this?

Answer 1

Usually, it’s better to add a customer_id column, and add a WHERE customer_id=12345 clause to all your MySQL queries. Having a separate table per customer is certainly possible, but it may not scale as nicely.