Logging in on non-vBulletin Page

[Radon3k]

I would like the ability (and I have discussed this in another thread, that was more of a 'is it possible?' type question rather than an actual request) to have a user log into the forums outside of the forums but not use the global.php. I want to have a login form on a page that logs and then, whether it's successful or not redirects back to the page where the login form is. I tried simply encrypting the passwords into MD5 and then checking it against the database but then I remembered that vB3 is using additional hashing or something like that. I think that's what I might need for this to work. I just want to take the username and password and cross-check it against the database, that's it. It should also update the database so that it shows the user as being logged in when the user goes to the forums as well. Thanks.