But after a ton of research, I came to the conclusion that learning to program/mvc/security techniques with php is total chaos. There is 10+ years of php tutorials out there and everyone of them takes a different approach to there programming methods and u have no idea if your adopting the habits of a guru or some punk who just figured out his first script. There are so many php functions that do the same thing (mysql vs msqli), u will struggle constantly just figuring out what the the right/best/newest way to do things is. It's all such a mess...
So I ended up taking the 101 udacity.com course and learned the basics of python/programming in really short order. After that I did the 253 web dev class there with Steve Huffman (creator of reddit). After that I fealt like I had a solid understanding of how mondern web apps are put together and I learned from some real pros.
I immediately picked up Flask, got set up on heroku, and have been having a blast ever since. Flask is especially nice because there are plugins/defaults/documentation on handling and avoiding most modern web app features/security issues. I highly recommend this route.
Good luck!