Social web application database design: how can I improve this schema?

Question

Background

I am developing a social web app for poets and writers, allowing them to share their poetry, gather feedback, and communicate with other poets. I have very

Answer 1

I'm not clear what's going on with your User* tables - they're set up as if they're 1:1 but the diagram reflects 1-to-many (the crow's foot symbol).

The ExternalAccounts and UserSettings could be normalised further (in which case they would then be 1-to-many!), which will give you a more maintainable design - you wouldn't need to add further columns to your schema for additional External Account or Notification Types (although this may be less scalable in terms of performance).

For example:

ExternalAccounts
    UserId int,
    AccountType varchar(45),  
    AccountIdentifier varchar(45)

will allow you to store LinkedIn, Google, etc. accounts in the same structure. Similarly, further Notification Types can be readily added using a structure like:

UserSettings
    UserId int,  
    NotificationType varchar(45),  
    NotificationFlag ENUM('on','off')

hth