How can PHP developers ensure that user-generated content is displayed safely without compromising security measures?

To ensure that user-generated content is displayed safely without compromising security measures, PHP developers can utilize functions like htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars() to encode the content before displaying it on the webpage. This will prevent any potentially malicious scripts or code from being executed by the browser.

$userContent = "<script>alert('XSS attack!')</script>";
$safeContent = htmlspecialchars($userContent);
echo $safeContent;