Syntactically, PHP is atrocious. But it has a lot of very good qualities as a web environment, which has nothing to do with the syntax of the language.
Easy to use documentation. "Batteries included" standard library that specifically caters to web dev. Shared-nothing architecture. No separate compilation step. Easy deployment via source code. Ability to use PHP files as configs and templates. In more recent times, autoloaders and APC cache.
As far the language goes, I also like their approach to dynamic invocations via __call. Very simple and powerful.
Saying "<PHP's syntax> is atrocious" has always been spurious (or simply mischaracterized as "I like X better"). Compared to what? C or Erlang or Haskell? It's really damaging to credibility to start with flamebaiting.
Easy to use documentation. "Batteries included" standard library that specifically caters to web dev. Shared-nothing architecture. No separate compilation step. Easy deployment via source code. Ability to use PHP files as configs and templates. In more recent times, autoloaders and APC cache.
As far the language goes, I also like their approach to dynamic invocations via __call. Very simple and powerful.