I'm planning to develop a PHP Web App, it will mainly be used by registered users(sessions) While thinking about the DB design, I was contemplating that in order to give the best user experience possible there would be lots of options for the user to activate, deactivate, specify, etc. For example: - Options for each layout elements, dialog boxes, dashboard, grid, etc. - color, size, stay visible, invisible, don't ask again, show everytime, advanced mode, simple mode, etc. This would get like 100s of fields ranging from simple Yes/No or 1 to N values..., for each user. So, is it having a field for each of these options the way to go? or how do those CRMs or CMS or other Web Apps do it to store lots of 1-2 char long values? Do they group them on Text fields separated by a special char and then "explode" them as an array for runtime usage? thank you