Rails is a very neat framework, which means it comes with all the pros and cons of a framework. The pros are that it can get you up and running very quickly, and it's really good at hiding the tedious details you would normally have to deal with. I think it's actually helped me write better PHP code, to be honest. The cons, of course, are that you have to learn it, like any framework it can sometimes get in the way, and it might be more than you need for certain projects. Rails is great for anything that resembles a CRUD app, and it forces you to stick to the MVC model; if you're doing something very different, it might not be the right tool.
One thing to consider is that PHP works on pretty much every *nix server out there out of the box, while Rails might take a bit of fiddling to set up and administer.
Rails is a very neat framework, which means it comes with all the pros and cons of a framework. The pros are that it can get you up and running very quickly, and it's really good at hiding the tedious details you would normally have to deal with. I think it's actually helped me write better PHP code, to be honest. The cons, of course, are that you have to learn it, like any framework it can sometimes get in the way, and it might be more than you need for certain projects. Rails is great for anything that resembles a CRUD app, and it forces you to stick to the MVC model; if you're doing something very different, it might not be the right tool.
One thing to consider is that PHP works on pretty much every *nix server out there out of the box, while Rails might take a bit of fiddling to set up and administer.