yes, I have found a temporary solution for now.
See, it's just temporary but as long as you write PHP correct, you will get the work done. Let me tell you how I do it.
Though right off the start I want to tell you that this is not a proper way to approach this, you should use some MVC framework.
Anyway,
I have XAMPP installed under Windows 8.1 and XAMPP's htdocs is in my "C" Drive.
I then create a folder inside "htdocs" in which I put all my frontend + backend code.Basically, gulpfile.js is at the root, then there is a components folder in which all front-end sources reside. There is another folder at root called "www" inside which I put my index.php.
Then I load gulp-livereload instead of gulp-connect and I add the livereload.listen(); method and Tags in all the php files I want to reload.
Works very fine except when PHP throws an error, untill you correct that error, you have keep reloading the page manually.