Reading everyone's reasons for not implementing SSL, I'm wondering, how do you handle user logins? I'm building a site right now, and I need to create user acc

Reading everyone's reasons for not implementing SSL, I'm wondering, how do you handle user logins? I'm building a site right now, and I need to create user accounts, and allow them to login with a username/password. Seems irresponsible to have them pass their password as cleartext when they log in. What do you do instead?