The big deal was FPM, the PHP FastCGI process manager. Apache had mod_fastcgi for half a decade before nginx even existed, and then got mod_fcgi, but it was no

The big deal was FPM, the PHP FastCGI process manager. Apache had mod_fastcgi for half a decade before nginx even existed, and then got mod_fcgi, but it was not much good without any support from PHP (which was an even bigger deal back then).