Best way to set up my DB

Hello, iam having a problem setting up my DB for my webpage, ill try to explain this situation the best way possible, the webpage iam building is a house seller webpage, the problem is iam now sure how i should layout the webpage. Only the admin can insert data into the DB. i have the login and admin area setup, now i just have layout the house's pages.

right now here is my current DB layout for my houses.

Field Type Collation Attributes Null Default Extra Action
property_id int(11) No auto_increment
h_type varchar(30) latin1_swedish_ci No
u_description text latin1_swedish_ci No
h_city varchar(50) latin1_swedish_ci No
h_state char(2) latin1_swedish_ci No Na
h_zipcode int(1) No 0
featured enum('0', '1') latin1_swedish_ci No 0
h_price varchar(30) latin1_swedish_ci No
h_timestamp timestamp ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP No CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
h_poster varchar(30) latin1_swedish_ci No
h_title varchar(30) latin1_swedish_ci No

Thats the basic information, what iam wondering is how can i get them to store informatin like this...

Property Features

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Single Family Property
County: RILEY
Year Built: 1933
5 total bedroom(s)
3 total bath(s)
3 total full bath(s)
Approximately 2593 sq. ft.
Two story
Master bedroom
Living room
Dining room
Family room
Kitchen
Master bedroom is 13X11
Living room is 19X14
Dining room is 14X13
Family room is 18X13 BR
Kitchen is 15X7 + 12X9+
Laundry room is 15X13
Fireplace(s)
1 car garage
Central air conditioning
Interior features: Clothes dryer, Clothes washer, Dishwasher, Disposal, Eat-in kitchen, Pantry, Range and oven, Refrigerator, Wood flrs
Exterior features: Deck, Patio, Public sewer srvc, Public water supply, Wooded
School District: 383MAN/OGD

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That is without me having to make a individual field for each property avaible, is there an easier way?

 

I run g o o f f c a m p u s dot c o m

I have found that the more fields in a table, the better, when it comes to real estate data. You should make a field for every imaginable peice of data that you will ever want to collect, and do it all from the get go, because changing your forms later on will be a huge headache!! Believe me, I have added fields twice now, and wish I had thought in advance a long long time ago.

Many of those fields will be different types of values... for example, you can make a field called 'numofcars' of type tiny int, because you know they wont have more than 4. Same goes for fireplaces, beds, baths, ect.... You can make the field type accordingly.

One other thing to keep in mind when creating a database for a project like this is that you must consider the method by which you will be collecting this data.

If you are just scraping it from somewhere, then you might make a text field for laundryroomsize, and enter the "15x13" string directly. If users are inputting, then you might make it two fields, and then use that data to calculate a total sqft. later..... Get the point... You must think ahead as to how you are going to use it and how you are going to get it.

THe only other option is to just have a medium text field that you would put that large text section in as, but that would be hard to use if you want to format the data differently, or search the data.

 

Hmm... I am on the oposite end here. Normalize your data, only add fields when needed, and NEVER - I'm going to repeat this - NEVER do a select * because if you do, then you only have to modify one query that uses the data.

Normalize, all queries require an ID as Int, and VarChar's are there for a reason