displaying profile image thumbnail in the <example.php> page

I'm a php/mysql newbie, and I have been playing around with access_user_class for about two weeks.
Today I wanted to find a way of displaying a profile thumbnail image when the user has logged in and goes to <example.php>.
To achieve this I created a folder in the filesystem to hold the imagefile, and a new field in the table <users> in the database to hold the URL to the imagefile.
Here's the php-code that was added to <example.php>, and I would like some comments to find out if I did this the correct way or not :

<img src="
<?php

#connecting to database
mysql_connect("localhost", "db_username", "db_password");
mysql_select_db("db_name");

#defines the variable $image

                # table name="users", field name that holds the URL to the imagefile="profile_thumb"

$image = mysql_query("SELECT profile_thumb FROM users WHERE login='$page_protect->user'")

or die(mysql_error());

#displaying the result of the db query
while($result_image = mysql_fetch_array( $image ))
{
echo $result_image['profile_thumb'];
}

#disconnecting from mysql
mysql_close();

?>
" border="1">

This is how the script works (. . . or at least how I think it works) :
The script accesses the database, finds the correct table, looks for the field that contains the image-URL's and finds the URL that belongs to the user that is currently logged in.
To find the correct username and the URL that belongs to it,  it uses the variable $page_protect->user
Instead of displaying the URL as text, it diplays the URL inside a <img src>-tag.

I would like some comments on this please. -Is this sensible php-scripting, or am I totally mistaken?
The script actually works, so maybe I'm at least on the right track  :)

you should use one of the profile user fields, this way you can use the existing methods and you have no problems with later class updates

I have been thinking the same,-using one of the fields in the profile user table would be better. The problem is, I would need more fields in the profile user table as time goes by. I've tried to use one of the existing fields, and even adding new fields but I can't make that work. Adding new fields to the profile user table is easy, but it seems like new fields need to be defined in some way so that the access_user_class can use them.
Being a newbie, this is something I don't understand.

check this thread:

http://www.webdigity.com/index.php/topic,2345.0.adding+new+fields+to+the+profile+table.html

keep the user table clean otherwise you start suddenly your own branch :)