> I'm still not sure how you deploy a non-PHP webserver to be honest... every language seems to be doing something different
Coming from PHP and having used a bunch of different languages I can understand what you are saying.
Unlike PHP, the other languages run in a process that listens on a port (80, 443 or another). The single process continuously run and handles multiple requests.
Back then, I still had to use NGINX or Apache with PHP, and in retrospect I find that more difficult to understand than a script that listens on a port.