What are some common pitfalls for beginners trying to create an admin tool like Procon or Rconnet using PHP?

One common pitfall for beginners when creating an admin tool like Procon or Rconnet using PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements when interacting with a database and sanitize user input to prevent malicious code execution.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->execute([$username]);
```

```php
// Example of sanitizing user input to prevent cross-site scripting attacks
$username = htmlspecialchars($_POST['username']);