Achievements / Badges system

Question

I have been browsing this site for the answer but I\'m still a little unsure how to plan a similar system in its database structure and implementation.

In PHP and MySQL

Answer 1

I would keep a similar type structure to what you have

Badges(badge_id, badge_name, badge_desc)
Users(user_id, etc)
UserBadges(badge_id, user_id, date_awarded)

And then add tracking table(s) depending on what you want to track and @ what detail level... then you can update the table accordingly and set triggers on it to "award" the badges

User_Activity(user_id, posts, upvotes, downvotes, etc...)

You can also track stats from the other direction too and trigger badge awards

Posts(post_id, user_id, upvotes, downvotes, etc...)

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Some other good points are made here