What are some best practices for PHP beginners to follow?

Issue: One common mistake for PHP beginners is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements when interacting with databases to ensure that user input is properly escaped. Code snippet:

// Establish a database connection
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare a SQL statement with placeholders
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');

// Bind the user input to the placeholder
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);

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

// Fetch the results
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();