Welcome to the world of web development! You are going to be recreating a lot of stuff (especially if you are going to be working for a corporation). I have a little experience with using djano but, I do most of my work in PHP. I have started to like Zend Framework(ZF) and I would recommend that to you as you already know PHP (instead of learning django, ror, etc.). ZF should speed up your development a bit. These days, I mostly prefer doing Sys Admin stuff and playing with Javascript and I shudder at creating a web app from scratch. When I am not working for money, I do not force myself to create a web app. But, when I do start working on something I tend to work extremely hard.