What are some common pitfalls to avoid when creating a PHP website based on another site's design?

One common pitfall to avoid when creating a PHP website based on another site's design is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave your site vulnerable to security threats such as SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements when interacting with your database to prevent malicious code from being executed.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();