Are there any best practices or guidelines to follow when designing a private messaging system using PHP?

When designing a private messaging system using PHP, it is important to consider security, scalability, and user experience. Some best practices to follow include implementing proper input validation to prevent SQL injection attacks, using encryption to protect sensitive data, and optimizing database queries for performance.

// Sample code for input validation using prepared statements
$message = $_POST['message'];

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO messages (message) VALUES (:message)");
$stmt->bindParam(':message', $message, PDO::PARAM_STR);
$stmt->execute();