Some arbitrary "best practices" don't make up for the language's general inadequacies (nor do any existing libraries). You might be able to write slightly less bad code, but you still aren't writing expressive code.
PHP does that.
Full size: http://williamriggins.com/mona.php?x=400&y=571
Favicon Size: http://williamriggins.com/mona.php?x=10&y=10
Code (minus base64'd image constant): http://pastie.org/506643
(PHP isn't even very good at "web stuff", although the frameworks try to improve this situation.)
1. When I want to do a quick Web page with no effort to last -- just to test something or prov a concept or something -- all I have to do is put together one or two PHP files and it's up. Even then I follow all the good programming practices: separation of business and presentation code, proper classes etc, and PHP let's me do that just fine.
2. If I properly organize my code (which I usually do) all I need to move a site from one location to another is simply copy a single directory. This even includes smaller SQL based sites since PHP5 has built-in support for SQLite. And it works on virtually any hosting available today.
Granted, these features are not really a compensation for all PHP's failures (don't ge me started), but there are times when those particular advantages outweigh anything else.