zlacker

In my mind the great thing about PHP was packaged application software like PHPNuke, Wordpress, etc. that would let you make a highly capable dynamic site with little or no coding.

At that time you could have made similar software for JSP, ColdFusion or ASP.NET but hosting would have been much more expensive and a big hassle. With PHP it was feasible to offer a $5 a month hosting plan good enough for blogs and simple web application.

I wrote a lot of PHP because it was a great way to deliver products to customers, particularly ones that didn't have a lot of resources for "ops" but also a place where I could write open source software which might really get used and have an impact.