PHP hosting is easier to find. Competent and secure PHP hosting is hard to find. Most PHP hosts run with all the compatibility options on to support their exist

PHP hosting is easier to find. Competent and secure PHP hosting is hard to find. Most PHP hosts run with all the compatibility options on to support their existing customers who were too cheap to get their sites done right. PHP is easier to start with, but more complex to grow in the right direction. PHP is ridiculously inconsistent and frustrating ([1]). If you get stuck, PHP coding help is easier to find... but it's useless 95% of the time as people give the same old wrong answers. Lower barrier to entry - more clueless "coders" on the forums sharing their (lack of) knowledge. Following from last point, "coders" like that mean you can get more consulting gigs fixing their crap. Personally, I stick to PHP for new projects because it's what I know - trying RoR out would have to be a spare-time endeavor, and I already have tons of stuff I like to do in my spare time. If I had no prior experience, I'd probably pick RoR though. [1] ignoring the old tired rant about function naming: object->badproperty just causes a notice and carries on, object->badfunction() crashes with a fatal error, null->property, null[property] and 1 + undefined are also just notices... basically you want an error handler that turns anything into a fatal error, but then you can't co-op with any older code as even older "frameworks" such as Joomla are full of that crap.