PHP is just another tool to be used in building a good web site. I've never actualy used it, but i've seen presentations on what you can do, and some of the things are pretty amazing. The guy giving the presentation had written all of his slides he was using in PHP. He didn't however show anything that couldn't be done in Perl, but I'm sure it made some things easier and some things more dificult.

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that you like riocar.org because it contains so much info. As long as your web site has stuff people want, the only thing you really need is text, links, and maybe a few tables/images if you want to get really fancy.

Too many people today focus on creating a site that for some reason ends up looking just like slashdot, without creating the content that people will actualy want to see.

Matthew