[ryanwaggoner]

I generally recommend PHP newbies start with a framework and I generally recommend they start with CakePHP over CodeIgniter, because CI is much more flexible and therefore forgiving of bad practices which can turn into bad habits. CakePHP is more strict, which probably teaches better design patterns early on.

In your case, though, you sound like an experienced programmer in other languages, so you should be fine starting with a simple CRUD app and then progressing to frameworks; any of the popular ones will do fine.