The docs I referenced are not the official documentation, but rather mind-bendingly bad systems I've had to deal with that were undocumented.
PHP isn't necessarily bad. But bad experiences mean I hate it.
Hide the PHP in a nice self-contained system, and I won't care, plus it'll simplify install/setup.
It sounds like those experiences were the fault of the developers not some intrinsic issue with the language itself. (i.e. its not like say "i hate flash because its a security shit-fueled nightmare").
Either way, the system currently has an "install script" and aims to develop deb/rpm/etc packages to achieve the same result, which seems like it's what you want.
Using the system package manager still pulls down dependencies I don't want system-wide.
The only dependencies this should have on eg Debian are PHP, SQLite and the Web Server virtual package.
As for your specific issues, I find it hard to follow your complaint when it comes to docs. Both php and apache httpd projects have extensive, easy to follow documentation.