I am trying to cobble together a login script in PHP as a learning project.

This is the code for my database write when the user registers. Both of these values are written to the database.

 $this->salt = md5(uniqid());
 $this->password = md5($password.$salt);

Upon logging in, the following function is fired. For some

function challengeLogin($submittedPassword, $publicSalt, $storedPassword){
    if(md5($submittedPassword.$publicSalt) == $actualPassword){
        return 0;
    }else{
        return 1;
    };
}

Unfortunately, on stepping through my code, the two values have never equaled. Can someone help me understand why?