I am currently in the beginning stages of creating a forum program. (Yes, I know there are already a bunch out there, but none of them suit my needs entirely.) My question is this: Would it be better to use a separate table for each forum's info (thread id, author, date, etc) and each forum's posts (ala- Phorum), or use one table for all forums' info and another for all posts? So the table structure (simplified) would either be:
forum1
forum1_posts
forum2
forum2_posts
or
forums
forum_posts
The first solution would obviously lead to more tables, but I would think it would make the queries faster, since it would be going through, say, 1000 messages, as opposed to 10,000 messages. I hope the question I am asking makes sense, and someone with a strong knowledge of db's can provide me with the best solution. FYI, I will be using mySQL. TIA.
forum1
forum1_posts
forum2
forum2_posts
or
forums
forum_posts
The first solution would obviously lead to more tables, but I would think it would make the queries faster, since it would be going through, say, 1000 messages, as opposed to 10,000 messages. I hope the question I am asking makes sense, and someone with a strong knowledge of db's can provide me with the best solution. FYI, I will be using mySQL. TIA.