phpass is actually one of the libraries I was talking about. When I first encountered it I was really intimidated. The usage didn't seem that bad to figure out but trying to comb through it's page to find installation instructions was tough. It didn't seem clear about whether this was a module like imagemagick that needed to be installed or if it was a drop-in library you could just use within any project.

Looking back now it seems obvious but back then it just too overwhelming. With PHP there's this 'just get it done' attitude and futzing around with phpass wasn't something I could let myself do back then.

Of course I now regret it. I ended up using a different encryption library for password storage on my app. It isn't md5 but I know it could and should be stronger. So now I'm in a situation where I'm rewriting the codebase in a different language entirely and the cherry on top is that I need to migrate all my user's passwords and even some data from the original method to bcrypt, which I'm now using. It seems simple in theory but I have a feeling this is going to cause some headaches. However, its totally necessary and especially for the type of application I'm working on which puts a big focus on privacy and security.