title: Best way of storing user settings in MySQL?
body: <p>I was just wondering what would be the best way of storing user-specific settings for my web applications? Just preferences users may have. I've thought of two options:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p><strong>Users table</strong> - I'll have a table for my users. Creating a column called "preferences" and storing serialized data there in key => value pairs</p></li>
  <li><p><strong>Settings table</strong> - Have a separate table called settings with a user_id column. Save the settings in the same way</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Any input would be appreciated. Thanks :)!</p>
  
  <p>--</p>
  
  <p>EDIT: Just to add, if I didn't serialize/json or whatever the data to put in the data, I'd have to have a column for each setting. </p>