Critique my chon. database design

[zyrolasting]

Hello folks.

 

I've read a new book that covered normalization and I'm thinking about applying what I learned by altering my tables. I still am not as experienced with MySQL "hands on", so I'd appreciate people better than me pushing me in the right direction. As it stands, I am the one who uploads the most to my site. I just update a blog and portfolio. There are several different categories under the blog that I segregate into different tables, always under one declaration. I don't understand why that int(10) is there... I asked for just one, but this is what the "copy create statement to clipboard" command in MySQL Query Browser gave me.

 

CREATE TABLE  ... (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `title` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `content` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  `outLink` varchar(45) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  FULLTEXT KEY `titleInd` (`title`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

 

I'm assuming duplicate tables may be a problem, but I'm having difficulty seeing all content concatenated.

 

outLink links to another table's filename column like a foreign key. I say "like" since I use MyISAM for  a FULLTEXT index, as title and content are loaded with text. (I enjoy writing. ) I would be querying another table with outlink's value when neccessary. I would always get just one row at a time. Every value in every table is unique, but if I ever want to introduce a new content type to the site, I need to make a new table of the above declaration.

 

I am an ameteur, so I'll gladly hear what you have to say to learn more. Just please don't bash. If I've made a mistake, please don't rub it in my face. Sorry for the disclaimer, I just had bad luck in other forums.

[fenway]

The varchar lengths are interesting choices -- also, how can you have a generic outlink?