For example: dropping braces for block statements is a convention; it doesn't inherently make someone a better programmer. It's also not by any means 'advanced'.
Also, the else shortcut should be seen as having different syntactic meaning. Instead of emphasizing it as a convenient shortcut, it should be seen as a particular variable has a default state and belongs to the lexical scope that the if statement is contained within (even though PHP doesn't recognize block statements as new lexical scopes).
Finally, ereg_ functions should never be used. And favoring str_* over preg_* only makes sense when a non-trivial[1] regular expression is not involved. The suggestion is tantamount to saying use a function for it's intended purpose. str_* functions search using a string, preg_* search using regular expressions.
[1] By non-trivial I mean a pattern that involves more than a terminal. E.g. '~hello~' is a valid regular expression but is composed of a single terminal, 'hello' (or if you wan to see it as five terminals) but nothing else (e.g. repeating, conditions, etc.) and so '~hello~' is a case where preg_* functions are overkill.