You might consider using FrogCMS (http://madebyfrog.com). Very simple, lightweight and customizable.
I made a post about our switch from wordpress to frogcms... and why we use it. (http://www.pigmata.com/post/website-realign-switch-to-frogcm...)
You can try selling it at http://brandstack.com/. You'll never know... someone might be interested in your domain.
best of luck!
Few more apps that I consider great UI/UX design implementation... http://www.foodspotting.com/, http://hunch.com/
Timothy Gray of http://www.shelfari.com/ Great UI and UX design.
Big fan of F-I work... I like http://www.kontain.com/ especially
PHP + CakePHP framework
as one of the commenter pointed out about bad programming habits with PHP, a framework will give you guidelines on good coding practices. It'll also help you develop faster and it's also quite easy to integrate with the front-end. CakePHP is like Rails framework but for PHP