I use this function for hashing my passwords:
// RETURNS: rAyZOnlNBxO2WA53z2rAtFlhdS+M7kec9hskSCpeL6j+WwcuUvfFbpFJUtHvv7ji
base64_encode(hash_hmac('sha384', $str . SC_NONCE, SC_SITEKEY, true));
And I store hashes in char(64) field (MySQL -InnoDB).
Should I use varchar(64) instead of char(64)? Why?
Edit: I changed sha256 with sha384. Because in this example, sha256 always returns 44 bytes for me. Sorry for confusing. Now it's 64-bytes.