People dislike PHP because it's very easy to pick up bad habits and create poor code in PHP.

Adopting proper OO and MVC patterns from a well-made PHP framework will help OP become a much better programmer as apposed to a guy that can google php-scripts.

Also, the php frameworks above are certainly a lot less magicky than a framework like Rails which, for what it's worth, yes I agree is not the best way to learn ruby.

@OP I recommended you learn through a framework for good reason. Becoming a better php programmer means following good coding standars/patterns. People dislike php because its very easy to write bad code - I don't want you to write bad code.