mySQL column design questions

[cruz610]

What kind of values do you assign to your columns when designing a database? Like what would you make a column for userid, email, username, textual input from users, etc...i have seen how some software does it, but i am wondering if there is a proper way to design it. Thanks 🙂

[Pig]

autoincrements are usually int or big int. Short text fields (<= 255 chars) should be varchar. Larger fields should be text, long text.

[superwormy]

UserID
INT(10)
Probably AUTO_INCREMENT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY too...

Username
VARCHAR(32)
Variable length character string, max of 32 characters, 'cause who's gonna have a username more than 32 characters...?

email
VARCHAR(64)
See above...

textualinput
TEXT or VARCHAR()
How much text are they inputting? Entire books? Or just what city they live in? VARCHAR() maxes out at 255 characters, sooo...