What are the potential security risks of allowing users to program certain areas themselves in PHP?

Allowing users to program certain areas themselves in PHP can pose security risks such as injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and unauthorized access to sensitive data. To mitigate these risks, it is important to validate and sanitize user input, restrict access to sensitive functions and data, and implement proper error handling to prevent information leakage.

// Example of validating and sanitizing user input
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$clean_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Example of restricting access to sensitive functions and data
if($user_role == 'admin'){
    // Allow access to sensitive functions
} else {
    // Restrict access to sensitive functions
}

// Example of implementing proper error handling
try {
    // Code that may throw an exception
} catch(Exception $e) {
    // Handle the exception
}