PHP has a reputation as a language that makes dead easy to write very ugly sphagetti code. As far as I learned a lot has chaned since last time I was using PHP - something like 5 years ago. Is there any good book or other resource which describes modern PHP with best practices, parts to avoid, etc?
If I were you, and I wanted to see how elegant and great PHP can be, I would just go check out and learn Laravel 4. 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/
Namespace convention sucks. That is all.