What are some common security measures to prevent PHP guestbooks from being hacked?

One common security measure to prevent PHP guestbooks from being hacked is to use input validation to sanitize user input and prevent SQL injection attacks. This can be done by using functions like mysqli_real_escape_string() or prepared statements to sanitize input before inserting it into the database.

// Example of using mysqli_real_escape_string() for input validation
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
$email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);
$message = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['message']);

// Example of using prepared statements for input validation
$stmt = $conn->prepare("INSERT INTO guestbook (name, email, message) VALUES (?, ?, ?)");
$stmt->bind_param("sss", $_POST['name'], $_POST['email'], $_POST['message']);
$stmt->execute();