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I want to know why Wordpress designed their database with two tables separating users and meta from each other. Wouldn't it be better if first_name, last_name, nickname, description, and capabilities are in the wp_users table?

SO what's the advantage for doing this separation?

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The meta table is build to allow custom user meta. If anything would be in just one table a plugin developer had to add a new column to the table for each meta data or the data had to be stored as serialized arrays/objects which would made them unsearchable.

Short: Performance and flexibility.

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  • thanks very much. will it make my queries faster when the two tables are separated?
    – Raymond
    Jun 7, 2012 at 8:36
  • Performance doesn’t depend so much on the number of tables. Indexes and optimized queries are much more important.
    – fuxia
    Jun 7, 2012 at 8:49

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