I'll consider Zepto if jQuery is overkill for the amount of JavaScript work I'll be needing for the specific project.

Used mostly for it's free private repos.

Been hosting with them for a while now. Never had an issue, great support, great docs: can't beat 'em. Though I'd probably move to AWS for large scale projects.

I'm a PHP developer by trade.

It's not Apache.

I don't think there's another PHP framework that can even come close to the power of Laravel at this point.