Storing a user's layout/widget customisations

[Teeej]

I'm sure this is a common question but the search terms I tried didn't give any results.

I'm looking to introduce functionality that sites like netvibes and BBC have done where you can control the look and feel of the page by dragging, dropping, closing and creating various widgets.

Most of the technology is stuff I've worked with before, but I'm not sure how to save and store the layouts. Is there a best practice way to do this?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[mrhoo]

Best way to save user preferences is to authenticate users (with cookies or sessions if supported) and save the data in a database.
You can save a small amount of data in the id cookie, but cookies have a way of vanishing, and without the database, there is no way to recover.

[paul_wilkins]

I'm looking to introduce functionality that sites like netvibes and BBC have done where you can control the look and feel of the page by dragging, dropping, closing and creating various widgets.

Most of the technology is stuff I've worked with before, but I'm not sure how to save and store the layouts. Is there a best practice way to do this?

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns...ttern=dragdrop

[Teeej]

Best way to save user preferences is to authenticate users (with cookies or sessions if supported) and save the data in a database.
You can save a small amount of data in the id cookie, but cookies have a way of vanishing, and without the database, there is no way to recover.

Yep, I understand the need to store it in the database for users to cover all sessions (and its simplified since the personalisation will only need to happen in their account homepage).

What I'm wondering is solutions on how to store these values in the database to take up minimum room. I'm thinking right now that I will give all possible widgets an ID (I'm sure this is how BBC does it).. and then somehow assign each possible layout position its own "id" too.