You aim to be PHP Boss, to reach your goal you have to master The Basics, Procedural and Object-Oriented Programming style then learn MVC, The Model, View and the Controller. For me MVC is a great invention, I can work with a team.
for example, im not good in design I will leave the "VIEW" (front-end) to my designer and I will keep working at the back-end. thats how I use CodeIgniter.
God Bless CI Contributors