Login w/ MySQL Database

I'm fairly new to Visual Basic and all it's brothers and sisters and I'm trying to figure out the best way to accomplish this task.

I have a website which users can register or what not. The users information is then stored in a MySQL database.

I wonder whats the best way/how would I go about on a form, logging the person if the username/password is correct. I know there is probably multiple ways to do this, but what is the best way?

Thanks in advance!
Cheers, justin

I store the username and password in two database fields. I encrypt the password, and I use the actual password as the salt for encryption.

That way, nobody, not even me, can read the password from the database.

So when you decrypt the stored value, use the password they typed as the salt. When it decrypts, if it matches the password, then you know they entered the correct password. Otherwise they didn't.