Actually scratch that, and ignore all the advice on this thread.
Stick with the multiple joins if it is working well enough.
You only need to rethink if it becomes a bottleneck. And then things like page caching which would eliminate queries the vast majority of the time, would give better results.
is it okay if i disagree with you? i’m sure it is 
i hate to see the efforts that i made disrespected so completely out of hand
more specifically, don’t do the joins if the key design means you don’t have to
and have a nice day yourself
Well the original poster was in much the same position. Seemingly he’s solved his problem and yet told that he’s doing it wrong. If he hasn’t got a performance bottleneck with the code, then its fine, and little point exploring any suggestions here, imo.