What are some common pitfalls when creating a PHP forum for user-generated content like articles?

One common pitfall when creating a PHP forum for user-generated content is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving the forum vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements when interacting with the database to prevent malicious code injection. 

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection

// Establish a database connection
$pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=forum", "username", "password");

// Prepare a SQL statement with placeholders
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO articles (title, content) VALUES (:title, :content)");

// Bind parameters to the placeholders
$stmt->bindParam(':title', $title);
$stmt->bindParam(':content', $content);

// Sanitize user input before binding
$title = filter_var($_POST['title'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$content = filter_var($_POST['content'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Execute the statement
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting user authentication session management data validation

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