I am currently working on a community site that will function much like Xanga, MySpace, or FaceBook. Users should be able to view others' blogs, send messages, view pictures, and other such things after logging in.

Utilizing MySQL 5 as the database, what are your design recommendations for such a site? One DB for each user? or HUGE tables for all the data of all users? (blog table, picture table, personal info table, etc.). a mixture?

Thanks for your input! -Chris

    I would keep it to ONE database for all your users, just keep the information in seperate tables.

      To make it easy: If you don't know how to design the database I don't think you should design that kind of site, it is a lot of work to get it working without people being able to "hack" it. Start by doing smaller things first, by doing that you will learn both to use PHP and MySQL and how you should design things. A few examples of what you could do is an address book for you and your friends to use, a script to keep track of your CDs or do things that you can use in the completed site, like a login system.

      But to answer your question: Use one database.

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