I was thirsty to learn a framework . It was a tough job selecting a framework too . There is a lot of frameworks for PHP . Good programming starts when you start using frameworks . My friend Jose Antony suggested some of them . They are

ZendFramework : A powerful one by the PHP company Zend . Now with 1.8 there is RAD introduced . Thanks to Zend_Tool .

Symfony : RAD framework by Sensiolabs . An exceptionally good documentation . Any one who is new to MVC can easily understand .

CakePHP : Many forum posts tell its easy to learn .

Codeignitter : Many symfony users have switched to codeignitter . Sajith MR in his blog posted also tells about why he moved from symfony to codeignitter . There may be many more guys posted about it .

Yii : A new flexible one .

Finally my choice was zend-framework and now I am loving it . As I am new to the new MVC architecture it was little bit tough for me . But recently I found a wonderful tutorial by Rob Allen the author of the book ZendFramework in action . The tutorial is an easy to learn who are new to zend-framework 1.8 .

I was not person who used to read books in my college days too . But now adays it seems I am reading a lot .

  Zend framework in action is one of the books I love to read . I hope the book zend framework in action is one of the best books to learn Zend framework . He was the advisory board member of Zend . So you can guess the remaining standard of the book .If you consider buying one , go for it . (*I don't get any money for it , never think so )

I saw another book PHP in action when I was looking more details about Zend Framework in Action . Just looked the table of contents . Yes it also a wonderful one if you are new to PHP .

Also the book is just a starting point , you need to look the mannual pages of php.net and framework.zend.com to learn more .

Today I found another site which is also a good one to start . Its none other than Zend Cast . Its having lots of videos for beginners . You may love it and learn from it . http://www.zendcasts.com/

Updated on 14th October 2009 :

Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development: I got a chance to review the book "Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development" by Keith Pope . Its a wonderful book to learn Zend framework and many components . The book covers many commonly used components like Zend_ACL , Zend_Auth , Zend_Db , Zend_Form etc . Its really a nice book which will speedup your learning curve . You can also learn zend framework from the mannuals, but it may be easy to follow a person who is using zend framework than going single . The book covers a working example creating a shopping cart . It also uses good programming practices like unit testing with phpunit , debugging with xdebug etc . You can get a copy of the book from packt publishers. Its available in ebook and hardcopy . You will defnitely get the return once you have the book .

Hope you too will enjoy reading the book like me . I have posted my review here .