[qw]

One of the benefits of Wordpress is that it runs on PHP. It's very easy to find a cheap web host and just copy the files over. Many web hosts even have a simple button that sets it up for you.

A viable alternative would need to be just as simple, and currently that implies it should probably be implemented in PHP, which will exclude developers who want experience with "blog-friendly" languages.

[blunte]

PHP, _like Javascript_, can be great when used with some extra care. I have no beef with PHP (although omg do they waste space with curly braces on their own lines and vast amounts of indentation!)

A good foundation can be in any language, such as PHP. But it needs to have a modern, better architecture with a more consistent base library/API for the plugin writers to take advantage of. WP is like 1.0 of this. We've learned so much in the last 10-15 years; it would be nice to have a completely rethought foundation.

But for the plugins, I think there should be a standard interface layer (based on probably http, tcp, pipes, files, even memory stores for communication). Then plugins could be written in any language, hosted locally or remotely, and sandboxed.