If you want to go up with PHP then better use Laravel + Mysql or Postgresql. And if you want to learn you can opt for laracast.com videos. They are one of the best resource for laravel.
P.S Laravel is one of the best PHP based framework.
A lot of people is talking about Laravel. I'm new on web development, and I thought that Symfony 2 was more popular. Any specific reason for prefering Laravel to Symfony ?
Frameworks will give you a lot of learning to do up front, but it will pay off in the log run. PHP will be easier to get started with, but you will probably create a bit of a mess if its your first application. Maybe a microframework (like Flask) will make you do to enough things correctly, without being to much of a learning overhead.
P.S Laravel is one of the best PHP based framework.