I’m creating a messageboard for a team of volunteers. On this board people can write messages. These messages can be marked as read. Underneath each message a table with photos of the members is shown. The url of this photo is stored in a database. If a member clicks on his photo this photo changes to another image, so he know he has red the message. This function is working just fine.
But all these photo’s are added manually into the script. This means that whenever a new volunteer joins our club, I have to change the code (add his name) in order to have him marking too.
What I need is that the volunteers are automatically connected to the table. So, if I add a volunteers name into the database (without editing the code), his photo will be displayed too. And whenever I delete a volunteer, his photo won’t be displayed anymore.
I can achieve this by creating a database holding all volunteers names and create a mysql_fetch_array function right beneath the message. But when I do this and volunteer A clicks his photo, all photos of volunteer A changes, not just fot the message he just has read, also all the other message are marked too. I need that every message gets a unique row of photos that can be marked, so that the user knows he has marked that single message, not all of them.
How can this be achieved?
What I have right now:
The database db_users
id (AI), primary
name (varchar), 255
address (varchar), 255
email (varchar), 255
stillActive (varchar), 5 //if `value` is set to yes, his photo is displayed beneath a message. If `value` is set to no, his photo won't be visibile anymore.
The database db_messages
id (AI), primary
name (varchar), 255 //the name wo entered the message
message (varchar), 999 //the message itself
urlUserA // the url of the photo of volunteer A
urlUserB // the url of the photo of volunteer B
urlUserC // the url of the photo of volunteer C
The mark_read.php
$sql2 = "SELECT * FROM $tbl_name WHERE id = ".$_GET['id']; //to get the specific message
$result2 = mysql_query($sql2);
$url = $_GET['url']; // the url of the MARKED image
$recover = $_GET['recover']; // the url of the UNMARKED image
$tabel = $_GET['tabel'];
$id = $_GET['id'];
$date = $_GET['date'];
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result2);
$tabel_content = $row[$tabel];
if ($tabel_content == $url){
$sql = "UPDATE " . mysql_real_escape_string($tbl_name) .
" SET ".$_GET['tabel']." = '".$_GET['recover'].
"' WHERE id = ".$_GET['id'];
$result = mysql_query($sql);
}
elseif ($tabel_content == $recover) {
$sql = "UPDATE " . mysql_real_escape_string($tbl_name) .
" SET ".$_GET['tabel']." = '".$_GET['url'].
"' WHERE id = ".$_GET['id'];
$result = mysql_query($sql);
}
The if code above is used to see whether the user already marked the message or not. If it is marked and he’ll click his photo again, the photo will be unmarked again.
As you can see, if I need to add a new volunteer, I have to add a table to the database, change the code of add_message.php. A lot of work. I need something that whenever I add a user into the db_user and save it, he’ll be able to mark messages too, without having to create a new table urlUserD before he can use it.
Any help on this will be very much appreciated.
The message is added using this page:
addMSG.php
mysql_connect("$host", "$username", "$password")or die("cannot connect");
mysql_select_db("$db_name")or die("cannot select DB");
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$date = $_POST['date'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$name = $_POST['name']; // the name from the person who posted the msg
$sql="INSERT INTO $tbl_name(
date,
archive,
year,
message,
name,
subject
)
VALUES(
'$date',
'no',
'2014',
'$message',
'$name',
'$subject'
)";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
How (and where) do I add code in order to bind all the users to the newly created message?
but it’s a very basic page with googled images, just to give you an idea. Click and write as you want, it’s a demo page. “bericht opstellen” means “write message” . “onderwerp” = “subject” and “bericht” = “message”. 
