What is md5() for?

Question

I was reading this tutorial for a simple PHP login system.

In the end it recommends that you should encrypt your password using md5().

Though I know this is a be

Answer 1

You're missing the important step - the salt. This is a unique (per user, ideally) bit of extra data that you add to the password before hashing it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_%28cryptography%29