What are common pitfalls for beginners when building a PHP website?

Common pitfalls for beginners when building a PHP website include not sanitizing user input, not using proper error handling, and not securing sensitive data. To avoid these pitfalls, always validate and sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection and other security vulnerabilities, implement error handling to gracefully handle exceptions and errors, and use encryption or hashing techniques to secure sensitive data.

// Sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection
$username = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $_POST['username']);

// Implement error handling
try {
    // Your PHP code here
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo 'An error occurred: ' . $e->getMessage();
}

// Secure sensitive data using encryption
$encrypted_password = password_hash($_POST['password'], PASSWORD_DEFAULT);