In what ways can PHP forum developers optimize the process of marking posts as read for multiple users with different reading histories?

To optimize the process of marking posts as read for multiple users with different reading histories, PHP forum developers can implement a system where each user has a separate table or field in the database to track their read posts. This way, when a user marks a post as read, only their own reading history is updated, reducing the number of database queries and improving performance.

// Assuming $userId is the current user's ID and $postId is the ID of the post being marked as read

// Check if the user has already marked the post as read
$readPost = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM user_read_posts WHERE user_id = :userId AND post_id = :postId");
$readPost->execute(array(':userId' => $userId, ':postId' => $postId));

if($readPost->rowCount() == 0){
    // If the post has not been marked as read by the user, insert a new record
    $markRead = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO user_read_posts (user_id, post_id) VALUES (:userId, :postId)");
    $markRead->execute(array(':userId' => $userId, ':postId' => $postId));
}