Boss told me he wants our website done in JSF. Since I came from PHP and this is a really different environment but Java is here to stay. Should I convince him to move to Spring at least? Is it any easier?

As a frontend dev I hate JSF, JSP and most other Java so called template engines. Lots of "have to" not much "can do", and horrible syntax. Freemarker is kind of ok. I still hate it.

Tell your boss that a cleaner way to do it is have your Java back end expose a set of APIs and write a front end to consume those end points, in a separate repo, as a different project. And to burn any knowledge of JSF or JSP out of his or her mind.

@ChrisCooney @grasshopper99 second both of your points. built a large web jsp application and still have nightmares of it to this day

Thanks for the advice. I'm going to try to change his mind because I'm having a nightmare trying to learn that.