The FA itself points readers to Python (with Flask, Pyramids, or Django), and also gives an offhand mention of Ruby + Rails and Perl + Catalyst. Java had also become a pretty reasonable language & environment by this time, and off-beat "let's build a better language on top of an existing runtime/ecosystem" languages like Clojure and F# were in full swing.
PHP was already very successful before Django or Rails even had their first release.
I remember trying to set up a Python Django web site for the first time around 2010 because Python seems like the better language and it was such a PITA compared to PHP's it-just-works nature.
