What are some common pitfalls to avoid when creating PHP forms for user registration?

One common pitfall to avoid when creating PHP forms for user registration is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To mitigate this risk, always use prepared statements when interacting with your database to prevent malicious input from being executed as SQL commands.

// Connect to database
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Prepare SQL statement using placeholders
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, password) VALUES (?, ?)");

// Bind parameters and execute statement
$stmt->bind_param("ss", $username, $password);
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = password_hash($_POST['password'], PASSWORD_DEFAULT);
$stmt->execute();