First of all: Programming is learned by practicing, get off HN, books and just do it.
If you are a person who can master a practical subject (typing code) by just reading specifications, I'd recommend stop using PHP and maybe switch to a more thoretical language; LISP, prolog, mathematica why not?
If you are a "mechanic" type of person why learn by experience, just start programming, don't worry, you'll learn!
I recently programmed a site in PHP more or less boilerplaty. The idea to avoid ugly, boring code is to abstract things away, supposedly by a framework or by yourself. Nevertheless if you don't know what you're looking for, you won't find it.
A thing i would probably use next time is MORE regular expressions for sanitizing input. Learn regexp, it's a time saver!
1) I too started with basic tutorials, but bit by bit startede gravitating towards PHP.NET, finally landing in some nice PHP-framework. I see PHP as a great language, but not a great framework. There are no prepackaged 'concepts' of programming as in, for instance, ruby on rails. There is however lots of nice low-level type of oppurtunities for clever hacks if you know the technical bits, as in C.
2) I wouldn't think about it, as for always, i would start typing away. It's not LISP, Prolog or Haskell where a lot of planning is involved.