Database Driven Bitfield (Usergroup Management)

[consolegaming]

I'm getting ready to re-release my mod for 4.0 which allows for the online user list (on forum home) to be split up into certain groups/categories (currently up to 3 of them). i.e. so your staff can be listed separately from your normal users.

And in the usergroup editing screen you currently have these 3 selectable groups each with a Yes and No option. i.e. if the usergroup is a staff usergroup you'd select Yes. These groups are currently VIP, Staff and Premium User (uses phrases so changeable names).

This is currently handled using a bitfield in an xml file for my product. Now this is pretty inflexible and the main thing that was requested for my product was to be able to have as many of these definable groups as you want. i.e. completely flexible.

I understand I'd have to create a separate db table and a admin screen to edit these 'groups'. That I don't think I'd have too much trouble with or at least there's sufficient information around to find out how (the custom screen part lol). The part I'm struggling with is how I could then use this custom db table to populate a bitfield that I could then use on the usergroup management screen rather than having it manually defined in the xml file.

For the first 4.x version I intend to just expand it to 5 manual groups/categories in the xml file but I can see the benefits in letting people define however many they want. Am I looking at this the wrong way? If so could I be pointed in the correct direction lol. i.e. should I be looking at moving the settings elsewhere and trying to handle things myself?

Sorry if any of any of my questions were silly. I'm still fairly new to Product/Mod Development and the one I have released so far was a re-release of someone elses (with permission of course) so there are probably some things that I didn't pick up because of that.