title: Encrypting/Decrypting Passwords to and from a MySQL database
body: <p>I'm starting to create a user system for my website, and what I want to do is to have the passwords encrypted, rather than plaintext. I'm using PHP/MySQL, so I figured <code>crypt()</code> is a good place to start. However, I'm brand new to cryptography like this, and I'm having trouble understanding exactly how it works. Does anybody know how to implement, at the simplest level, a way for passwords to be stored as an encrypted string, but always be able to be decrypted, without a security issue?</p>