I think one of the reasons that there isn't the same amount of support for PHP as there is for Perl is that it's only relatively recently become popular. The newsgroup alt.php has only just started up and seems to be getting busier by the day; lots of newsservers didn't carry it at first. The online documnetation is excellent, something which I personally think is a lot more useful than Perl's docs, and there are quite a few websites out there that are useful forums for learning about and discussing PHP.

I think that PHP has it's uses and can be used in conjunction with Perl to get stuff done. They both have their advantages and disadvantages, but you can only really make up your own mind on the matter by trying them out. Try doing the same task in PHP and then try again in Perl - sometimes PHP will be best for the job and sometimes Perl will.