User system - multiple usergroups - php

Question

I am currently working on a user system, and would like to setup multiple usergroups/ranks per member. I see other posts on here explaining it by using foreign keys, denormalized tables, etc... but they're all from 2010-2012, so wasn't sure if there were easier/better standard ways of doing it.
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (
`id` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`username` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`password` varchar(80) NOT NULL,
`email` varchar(80) NOT NULL,
`character_name` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`verify` int(5) NOT NULL,
`rank` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`position` int(10) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
UNIQUE INDEX (`email`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=3;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `rank` (
`id` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`rank` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`position` int(10) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=26 ;
The above are my two tables. Here are the two table structures with three examples in each:
users
id | username | password | email | character_name | verify | rank | position
1 | userA | passA | A#A | characterA | yes | mem | 1
2 | userB | passB | B#B | characterB | yes | mod | 1
3 | userC | passC | C#C | characterC | yes | adm | 3
rank
id | rank | position
1 | mem | 1
2 | mod | 1
3 | adm | 3
Users should be able to be in multiple ranks.
userA should only be a mem.
userB should be a mem and mod.
userC should be a mem, mod, and adm.
If I were to join both tables:
SELECT * FROM rank INNER JOIN users ON rank.position = users.position;
Would that cause userA to be mem and mod as well, since the position for both is 1?
Would it make more sense to remove rank and position from users, position from rank, and join based on user id?
For example (question 2):
users
id | username | password | email | character_name | verify
1 | userA | passA | A#A | characterA | yes
2 | userB | passB | B#B | characterB | yes
3 | userC | passC | C#C | characterC | yes
rank
id | rank
1 | mem
2 | mem
2 | mod
3 | mem
3 | mod
3 | adm
SELECT * FROM rank INNER JOIN users ON rank.id = users.id;
Once selected, I want certain ranks to be able to do certain things.
$sql = SELECT * FROM rank INNER JOIN users ON rank.id = users.id;
$ranks = $conn->query($sql);
$ranks->execute();
foreach ($ranks as $row) {
if($row['rank'] == "mem" {
Do something.
}
if($row['rank'] == "mod" {
Do something else.
}
if($row['rank'] == "adm" {
Do another something else.
}
}
Is the above correct?
Edited, because my first posting apparently wasn't clear enough.
Can anyone help?