Regardless of whether PHP solved this particular problem, it also caused a lot of its own due to numerous security issues and documentation that encouraged unsafe use of libraries, until recently.
The model is this: run-once-and-die + build-it-on-the-server.
Those two ideas are extremely powerful, a little like immutability, in that they rule out a huge number of issues. The issue with PHP wasn't this model which became associated with the morass of amateurs using the language. A shame.