Most shared hosts also supported CGI with scripts/binaries in a set cgi-bin directory. A lot of them (that I ever saw) even had some preinstalled CGI scripts li

Most shared hosts also supported CGI with scripts/binaries in a set cgi-bin directory. A lot of them (that I ever saw) even had some preinstalled CGI scripts linked into the user account's cgi-bin. What a lot of shared hosts did not support were things like mod_cgi or mod_rewrite that might let you make cleaner looking URLs. With PHP you just enable mod_php and add index.php to the DirectoryIndex directive and call it a day. Many hosts didn't allow overrides so you couldn't add a CGI handler to your DirectoryIndex unless you knew the server admins. So like I said, PHP was the easiest to get running. It wasn't the only thing that worked or was supported but it made it simple to have URLs that looked "professional" with no access to a server's configuration and no ability to override defaults. So it worked well for cheap shared hosting. I'm still annoyed I know this stuff almost twenty years after having to deal with it. People really wanted their brand new .com address to serve up their "dynamic" homepage with nothing hanging off the path. PHP was the worst is better way to make that happen.