What are common issues with PHP usage in developing social networking websites?

One common issue with PHP usage in developing social networking websites is the potential for security vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, it is important to use prepared statements when interacting with databases to sanitize user input. 

// Using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();
```

Another common issue is the scalability of the website as it grows in users and data. To address this, developers can implement caching mechanisms to reduce the load on the server and optimize database queries.

```php
// Implementing caching to improve scalability
$cacheKey = 'user_' . $userId;
$userData = $cache->get($cacheKey);

if (!$userData) {
    $userData = getUserDataFromDatabase($userId);
    $cache->set($cacheKey, $userData, 3600); // Cache for 1 hour
}

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting session management scalability performance tuning

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