What are common security considerations when implementing a user image gallery in PHP?

One common security consideration when implementing a user image gallery in PHP is preventing unauthorized access to the images. This can be achieved by storing the images outside of the web root directory and using PHP to serve the images only to authenticated users. Additionally, it's important to validate and sanitize user input to prevent malicious code injection.

// Check if user is authenticated before serving the image
if ($user_authenticated) {
    $image_path = '/path/to/images/' . $image_name;
    
    // Validate and sanitize image name
    $image_name = filter_var($_GET['image'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

    // Serve the image
    header('Content-Type: image/jpeg');
    readfile($image_path);
} else {
    echo 'Access denied.';
}