This is what the team behind Discourse is attempting to address somewhat, making Ruby software as idiot-proof to set up as PHP applications.

Whether they will end up succeeding is yet to be seen, but this does definitely seem like an area where competition will benefit the greater good, as displacing PHP with any one of the better designed languages out there would benefit the internet as a whole.

I do wonder though: is the procedural nature of PHP equally responsible for it's adoption by inexperienced developers?

Sure, PHP is cheap and widely available, but you also don't need to understand the concepts behind object orientation to hack together a "dynamic" website with a few includes. And at that point you're just familiar enough with PHP to favor it for future development.