If people think PHP is easier to learn than Perl, I think they're wrong.

I think they're right. Pick through a copy of the Camel and see how many times they write something like "but be careful not to do x, because that actually does y, and the Earth will crash into the sun". PHP is derived from Perl, but avoids a lot of the shortcuts Perl implemented, so there is less for a new programmer to learn. However, this minefield of shortcuts is what makes Perl so nice to program in once you figure it all out.

Additionally, PHP supports a lot of core functionality that is good for web programming. For instance, although I consider PHP's database layer to be broken, the fact is that it's in the core. The same can't be said for Perl's DBI. Likewise, Perl's CGI.pm is a beast of a module, even if all you really need is param(), header(), and maybe cookie(). PHP web programming tutorials cover those things in their first few chapters, but how many CGI/Perl tutorials out there are still teaching you to parse params by hand?