What are some best practices for handling form submissions and database interactions in PHP to avoid errors like the one described in the forum thread?

The issue described in the forum thread is likely caused by not properly sanitizing user input before inserting it into the database, leading to SQL injection vulnerabilities. To avoid such errors, it is crucial to use prepared statements with parameterized queries to securely interact with the database.

// Connect to the database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=your_database', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare a SQL statement with placeholders
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES (:username, :email)');

// Bind parameters to the placeholders
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $_POST['email']);

// Execute the prepared statement
$stmt->execute();