I meant in the sense of not promoting structured programming and being many people's first (and only) exposure to programming.

Python very much promotes a certain style of programming (object oriented, with some functional elements). I.e. I can write Basic in PHP (especially after the decision to add goto) but not in Python (which is a benefit; also important to me is the fact I can't write Perl in Python).

Most every managed web hosting provider has PHP integration enabled in their product. If a kid is building a website for their boy scout troop which needs an email feedback or guest book form, they will use PHP.

What's also fascinating is relational databases are a part of the "make a simple web application" stack as well. So you have people with very little exposure to computing using very complex environments with very strong abstraction layers. There's many many years of hard-core hacking that enabled that to happen.