Developing in PHP is quiet easy: besides the already mentioned automatic variable creation, I find it very handy, that you can put your PHP code directly into the HTML page. You don't have to wrap all your HTML into print() calls.

Like most Perl situations, there is more than one way to do it. If you have lots of program logic, and a small amount of html, look at CGI.pm; if it is the other way around, EmbPerl. Either takes advantage of the performance of mod_perl.

I cannot comment on some of the more sophisticated solutions such as Mason.

Ken