[throwaway420]

I think many developers on here evaluate programming languages solely based on technical merits without considering business needs. PHP's sweet spot currently makes it the wisest choice for many small business projects.

When you're talking about any project that's less than a thousand lines of code or so, PHP's weaknesses don't really present a major problem and its strengths (ease of deployment, ease and ubiquity of hosting, having a bunch of necessary features for websites from DB access to email built into the language) are ideal for smaller organizations, particularly those without a full-time technical staff.

Think about how many small businesses out there (restaurants, real estate agents, a simple online store) just need 1 or 2 basic dynamic elements (simple DB access, a contact form, some validation on an order form, maybe sending a confirmation email on a sale) on their website to work to enhance their business. PHP is a great choice for these types of projects - a good portion of non-technical small businesses don't need anything more elaborate than this.

I wouldn't recommend PHP for large or ambitious projects, as other alternatives like Node and Rails are likely better fits. But when you have a very simple small business project, PHP is by far the best choice for a lot of these types of projects.