Yes Xan is right, there is deffinetly object oriented coding in their. $this does seem to be a class of some sort.

Does $this really need to be changed? Else you are looking to rename the class....

I would suggest also making a dedicated table for the user preferences. However I would suggest making a column for each preference. Eg. user_id, gardening, pet, food.

As for the pets, gardening...

I suppose you could yes, you would need to play a little with the configuration. When I say a little I mean you would have to literally rewrite allot of how wordpress work.

Also I have had my...

I am actually still having the issue I can change the settings in my ini but what I am trying to do is validate all the information about the uploaders file before they actually upload it else they...

No I always use the ' to add data. Does this fill your fields exactly? and is this the order in wich yu have to put them in? I would try:

mysql_select_db("ecommerce");

$query = "INSERT INTO...