cakephp

CakePHP is a php development framework.
Supposedly it's easy for beginners to pick up. I've used it before and have my doubts about that. It's object-orientedand it helps to have some sort of basic understanding of OO programming.

If you know what you want to do (in OO terms), and have a plan, it does make OO php development easier. Beginners should either already understand PHP or OOP. If you know neither, your learning curve may be high.

THTML means a couple of things.
In a CakePHP environment, it's a documentation object class. A lot of people use it for creating/maintaining changelogs but you can also use it for common page elements - like headers and footers.

In a regular unix environment, THTML files contain tcl (tool command language) scripts. tcl is commonly used for running other programs under a simple tcl GUI.