And if you're going the Laravel route (which I certainly recommend, I've used it a couple times here and there when PHP has been required), check out CodeBright by Dayle Rees (a Laravel core team member) on Leanpub (https://leanpub.com/codebright). It was the manual I needed to get going.
I recently moved from CodeIgniter 2.x over to Laravel, and it was like breathing fresh new air at the top of a mountain. Everything is cutting edge, organized, and fun to code again. Sounds like hyperbole, but for real it reinvigorated my programming efforts.
Check it out here: http://laravel.com/