What potential pitfalls should be considered when using PHP to generate static pages?

One potential pitfall when using PHP to generate static pages is the risk of exposing sensitive information, such as database credentials or API keys, in the generated HTML. To mitigate this risk, it's important to ensure that sensitive information is not hard-coded directly into the PHP script that generates the static pages. Instead, consider storing sensitive information in a separate configuration file outside of the web root.

<?php
// config.php
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_USER', 'username');
define('DB_PASS', 'password');
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name');

// generate_static_page.php
require_once 'config.php';

// Use the defined constants in your code to connect to the database or perform other operations