PHP is not dead. It remains about as popular now as it has been for some time, and shows no signs whatsoever of dying.
There's not a lot of new or interesting stuff being done in PHP, because of the limitations of the language, but it's still the main workhorse for a great deal of humdrum ordinary Web stuff: forums, blogs, wikis, smaller shopping sites, smaller content management systems. Most organizations simply don't need a bleeding edge solution, and for them something thrown together using off-the-shelf PHP-based solutions (WordPress, MediaWiki, phpBB, etc.) will be quite sufficient for their purposes.
Also, because PHP is so pervasive and so readily available, PHP developers are really easy to come by.
PHP is far from dead, yes. But JavaScript and Node are the first case where in my history where an alternative seems to stick and have proper staying power in PHP devs minds.
This never happened with RoR, for example. It was a passing fad in the mainstream. I know it's probably still used by millions, but relatively to PHP.
There's not a lot of new or interesting stuff being done in PHP, because of the limitations of the language, but it's still the main workhorse for a great deal of humdrum ordinary Web stuff: forums, blogs, wikis, smaller shopping sites, smaller content management systems. Most organizations simply don't need a bleeding edge solution, and for them something thrown together using off-the-shelf PHP-based solutions (WordPress, MediaWiki, phpBB, etc.) will be quite sufficient for their purposes.
Also, because PHP is so pervasive and so readily available, PHP developers are really easy to come by.