What is the most popular PHP framework available?

I’ve been looking into PHP web frameworks ever since being introduced to Python/Django. Some people say that PHP is in itself a framework, but I don’t buy that. There are too many handy things a framework like Django does for you that makes it so you don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” every time you start a new project. The website http://www.phpframeworks.com/ compares the features of many of the existing PHP frameworks, but what I really want to know is this: which one is the most popular framework and why? What makes one framework superior to another? Why do some of the frameworks not support templating? What do you, the Fluther community, use for your own projects and why?