I've been active with PHP and Perl for a couple years, and here's my take on it:

Database Interaction:
PHP Comes standard, but lacks a standardized interface (outside of PEAR)
Perl You need to go get it, but DBI provides a standardized api, making it very easy to switch backend databases with minimal code change.

Web Programming:
PHP Php is really fast and benefits from being designed as a web programming language. Much easier to throw together quick pages. Also, the creation of super-globals for server and form/cookie data is very nice for web programming as well.
Perl Apache::ASP to be almost as clean as php, as can embperl.

Power and Flexibility:
PHP clunky interface to system calls, no interface to the apache api. My php and zend extensions had to be patched differently to compile/run under every minor version of php since 4.0.2
Perl You can write full Apache modules in pure perl. Perl modules written in C/xs seem much more stable (most of mine required no changes throughout the perl 5 lifespan).

Overall, php is quick, easy and not a bad language choice. Perl is almost as quick for straight web-programming, but is a more mature programming language that gives you greater flexibility in the long run. At least that's my $0.02.