too long

Question

I am developing a website and in that users can send messages between users.

Which will be the best way to send messages.Some of them i knew are

1.Storing messages in database tables and displaying them.
2.Using a mail server to send mails instead of messages.

Which will be the fastest and most efficient? Are there any other ways?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I believe you can combine both methods.

1. Store messages in database tables, and display them when the receiver is online. Use some sort of caching (redis, memcached, ...) to help you speed up.
2. Send a daily (or weekly) digest of unread messages to your users, since they may not be online all the time.

Digest mails lead users to your site, which is helpful in most cases. Also, from my experience, sending too many emails is not easy to do it right.

btw, if you want real-time messaging, have a look at ejabberd

Hope this helps. :-)