I havnt read all of this post, but if anyone does wanna learn php try this website:
http://www.tizag.com
Very good website all there tutorials are simple and easy to follow and learn from , they dont write pages and pages of rubbish its all good and easy to understand so you dont drown in infomation like on some tutorial sites.
They also have very good CSS and SQL tutorials which i think are great, i havnt looked at the HTML tutorials yet because well by time i found this website i had mastered HTML and XHTML and was researching PHP.
Regards,
Makaveli