[kls]

That is the thing, PHP has a whole lot more projects that require a small amount of tweaking and customizing to get a small business up and running. Where Java has far more middleware and integration libraries for developers that are building custom systems. We do both at our company and I would say this, if you are doing something custom you will be much happier with Java, it will take longer to get to market but that is where Java shines, in custom business apps. If you are just doing a ecommerce site or a simple website then get Magento or Wordpress and use PHP, What we tend to do for small clients that we think will become big clients is that we back their front end technology like Wordpress with and ESB like Mule and do any custom logic in Java behind mule. This way the get the benefits of both.