Just a little verification on verifying user data

PHP have some filters inbuilt. you might want to check it out first - http://sg2.php.net/manual/en/function.filter-list.php

And you should group your errors (username errors, email errors, password errors) and not all in one big IF-ELSE..

alright, I recoded it to group the parts together, now I have a different problem. It doesn't check anything! besides the recaptcha.

if(empty($username)) {
			$errorMsg .= "<li>Please fill in your username</li>";
		} elseif($uname_check > 0){ 
			$errorMsg .= "<li>Sorry, that username is already in our database</li>";
		} elseif((strlen($username) < 4) || (strlen($username) > 20)) {
			$errorMsg .= "<li>username must be etweeen 4-20 letters/numbers</li>";
			}

	if(empty($email)) {
			$errorMsg .= "<li>Please fill in your email address</li>";
		} elseif($email_check > 0){ 
			$errorMsg .= "<li>Sorry, that email address is already in our database</li>";
			}

	if((!$pass1) || (!$pass2)) {
			$errorMsg .= "<li>Please fill in both password fields correctly</li>";
		} elseif($pass1 != $pass2){ 
			$errorMsg .= "<li>both emails must match</li>";
			}

	if($errorMsg = "") { // Error handling is ended, process the data and add member to database

that's how it's all grouped right now. Just so you can have a closer look, take a look at: http://epicrevolt.com/zcomedy/site/register.php

I tested and seems to work. What are your test data?

I figured out the problem. It seems as though if you strip_tags before processing it destroys it. So I just used the htmlspecialchars and it works. here's my function.

function stripme($value) {//strip it good! make it ready for the database!
	$value = htmlspecialchars($value);
	$value = strip_tags($value);
	return $value;
	}