What are some common challenges faced by beginners when building a simple blog using PHP?

One common challenge faced by beginners when building a simple blog using PHP is handling form submissions. It's important to properly sanitize and validate user input to prevent security vulnerabilities. Additionally, beginners may struggle with connecting to a database and querying data to display on the blog.

// Example of sanitizing and validating user input
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Example of connecting to a MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "blog";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}