Is Laravel or CodeIgniter better for a small business website?

CodeIgniter's lighter footprint and shorter learning curve often suit a simple site or tighter budget well, while Laravel's larger ecosystem pays off once a project needs more built-in functionality, like authentication, queues, or a more structured admin area. Many small projects do well on either; the real deciding factor is usually what the application needs to grow into.

What happened to the PHP frameworks that used to be compared with Laravel?

CakePHP and the original CodeIgniter 3 were common reference points a decade ago, but the landscape has consolidated since then. CodeIgniter rewrote itself as CodeIgniter 4, Laravel became the dominant choice by a wide margin, and Symfony emerged as the strongest option for large, highly structured enterprise systems.