What are common pitfalls in PHP when customizing HTML templates for contact forms?

One common pitfall when customizing HTML templates for contact forms in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To solve this issue, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before inserting it into the database. 

// Sanitize user input before inserting into the database
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);
$message = htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']);

// Insert sanitized data into the database
$query = "INSERT INTO contact_form (name, email, message) VALUES ('$name', '$email', '$message')";
mysqli_query($connection, $query);

Keywords

HTML templates contact forms PHP validation security.

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