What potential issues could arise from developing directly on a live system in PHP?

One potential issue that could arise from developing directly on a live system in PHP is the risk of introducing bugs or errors that could impact the functionality of the live site. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to develop and test changes in a separate development environment before deploying them to the live system.

// Example of creating a development environment configuration file
// config_dev.php

define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_USER', 'root');
define('DB_PASS', 'password');
define('DB_NAME', 'my_database');