I am a Ruby on Rails programmer from the early days. It is my platform of choice. And yet, I still have massive respect for PHP. For me, it's the next best option.
I worked in PHP for five years before I worked in Rails, and I think PHP is a great language for web development.
"I think Rails is a more modern platform. I think PHP is not the ideal choice. But I think PHP is a great platform."
Yeah but here's the rub. You can't compare Rails with PHP. You need to compare Ruby to PHP, and ask if the switching costs will outweigh any deficiencies; and you need to compare Rails to e.g. Cake or Symfony or similar, and ask if one language provides a framework whose advantages are so compelling that they too will outweigh those switching costs. I have yet to be convinced.
(weighting factors may apply for dev experience with one or the other, legacy code, hosting/infrastructure support, etc.)
I don't think something like Cake is a good comparison for Rails, and it's honestly not how I think of PHP. Developing in PHP is making a collection of functions and custom made classes hacked together, in my mind. I know there are frameworks, but if you're going to use a fancy framework, you'd might as well use Rails.
I wouldn't develop in Ruby without Rails, but I wouldn't develop in PHP with a framework.
I don't like rails. When I do web development, I do it in PHP, and I avoid PHP rails-like frameworks as well. I prefer more control and most of projects don't fit into a nice box for rails.
I worked in PHP for five years before I worked in Rails, and I think PHP is a great language for web development.