Is there a way to take any number, from say, 1 to 40000 and generate an 8 character hash?
I was thinking of using base_convert but couldn\'t figure out
base_convert
Why don't you just run md5 and take the first 8 characters?
md5
Because you are wanting a hash, it doesn't matter whether portions are discarded, but rather that the same input will produce the same hash.
$hash = substr(md5($num), 0, 8);