What are common pitfalls when developing a PHP login system for a website?

One common pitfall when developing a PHP login system is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements with parameterized queries when interacting with the database.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection

// Assume $username and $password are user inputs
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username AND password = :password");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->bindParam(':password', $password);
$stmt->execute();
$user = $stmt->fetch();