I'm new to Rails but so far I've completed the Rails Tutorial book and applying that stuff to my first proper app. Later I will tackle implementing user authentication (sign up, sign in, sign out) In the book it demonstrates very well how to sign users up, validate, etc. Usually in my PHP apps I have a process of allowing the user to signup, then they are sent a link to confirm their email address, then (from that link in the email) they can activate their account. In the backend, I use two tables - user_pending (for users who have signed up, but not yet activated their account), and user (for activated users). I decided a while back that I would use two tables as I didn't want the user table to get bogged down with users who never activate their account. Perhaps this is not too important, and I'm giving myself more work. Anyway could someone perhaps comment on what is the most commonly practiced technique for activating users - I'm assuming via email activation as this is what I see most when I sign up for new apps myself. If I do this process, should I use one table (user - with "activated" flag column) or two tables (user_pending and user - when users activate, the row is copied to user). Any comments welcome, especially if their is a newer better way to perform this process. Thank you -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rubyonrails-talk/6ff3e34c-8693-4a6e-86cd-0bc4e27be22f%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.