PHP had many positives: (1) killer apps like Wordpress and PHPmyadmin, (2) PHP apps are easy to install and run on most stock *nix system, and (3) bare-bone PHP runs fast, compared to Rails or other framework (which is not a fair comparison, though)

Unfortunately, PHP has failed in: (1) lack of leadership and the vision -- they need someone like DHH or Linus Torvalds or the support of a major corporation such as Google (HHVM from Facebook not withstanding) (2) PHP still suffers from the lack of respect from software engineers and developers, and faced the same fate of VB6 (which I've had fond memories of doing "casual programming"), (3) future of PHP looks grim, despite the upcoming release of PHP 7, with the exception of Hack and HHVM, but Hack is not PHP.