I know very little PHP and am in the process of learning it myself. I couldn't really find a use for CakePHP and felt it was making things more complicated for me. Perhaps you'll have a different experience, but I found it better to work with straight PHP to do what I needed. I'm sure after you've wrestled with it for a while, CakePHP may come in very handy for things you want help doing more easily, but could do just as well without it. Generally, it is recommended that you learn the language before learning to use a specific framework, which I have found to be useful advice.