Best PHP hashing method for storing user passwords in a MySQL table?

Question

I\'ve been reading Stack Overflow questions for about 15 minutes now and every single one seems to contradict the previous one I read. Bcrypt, SHA1, MD5, and so on. I currently

Answer 1

Use MD5, SHA1 or whatever encryption you want with a SALT.

For this example, I'm just going to use MD5 for explanation sake.

So user chooses a password, store that in $password for instance.

Now create a salt that's specific to your application.

$salt = 'my very own salt'; // or maybe make a random string for your salt

Then do

$more_difficult_password = md5($salt . $password);

This way people can't use dictionary attacks by just googling your MD5 string if it ever got compromised somehow.