There's no best framework, buddy. It depends on the discipline of the programmer, habits, etc. There's tons of frameworks out there, pick the one that suits you best.
cakePHP is also one of the popular one,,,,, my suggestion will be chosing anyout of Symphony,Cake,YII
Depends entirely on your requirements, how much time you have and your skill level. CodeIgnitor is nice - and I've been using ModX for the last 6 months with great results.
I prefer cakePHP personally as it's a good, lightweight and solid framework. As above though, it depends on what you're looking for and personal preference. Do some research based on the features that you want and pick one. If it doesnt meet your requirements or you don't like it, search to see if there's something better.
No doubts in that, ZEND is the best framework. Zend framework will be very hard to learn as a beginner. As a fresher "CodeIgniter" framework will be good to learn.
A framework is meant to make life easier, if it's learning curve is too steep, that kinda defeats the purpose of it.
Amongst the most popular are Zend, CakePHP and CodeIgniter. But if your a beginner I don't suggest you jump straight in, I suggest you learn atleast the basics first.
Well, my opinion is that you should create your own framework, i wanted to use other companies framework like Zend, CakePHP, and codeIgniter, i holded a pin and a paper and i draw such a big blueprint for my own framework and now i been working on it for 12 monthes and now it's very good, so try to do what i did. But anyway the best framework is Zend.
I've only ever used cakephp because of a recommendation from a friend. I like using cakephp and it really does speed things up. Unfortunately because its the only one I have used its hard for me to compare it to other ones.
Depends on your projects and requirements, Zend framework would be my suggestion. I have been using with zend framework for the past one year.