What are some common pitfalls to watch out for when installing and using web hosting scripts in PHP?

One common pitfall when installing and using web hosting scripts in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with a database to ensure that user input is properly escaped.

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