How many people are currently using PHP and MySQL
This combo ROCKS!! After much thought and investigation into various HTML parsing technologies, I decided to go for PHP and I haven't been disappointed.
Besides the speed (and boy is it speedy!), it's easier to develop in - ALL your code can potentially exist in just ONE file. After years of managing all the CGI and template documents required to build a non trivial app in PERL, it's such a pleasure to spend all day in just one or two documents!
Another big plus is the way PHP handles authentication. You can decide to protect access on a page by page basis - even inside this page you can conditionally decide to use authentication or not. When you use it, you can get valid user/password combos from anywhere - even from within the script itself. I'm got a 'log on' page that redirects those already authenticated, challenges those who have a particular cookie set, and asks all others to sign up (no challenge) - pretty slick! I don't think I'll be creating another .htaccess file ever again!
Some downsides though - the OO support in PHP is sketchy at best. It has a nasty habit of COPYING your objects whenever you reference them, which complicates things when you want to make changes in the objects. Nothing that can't be worked around, but it creates bugs that are hard to trace. I understand the OO support has improved in version 4 which is in beta at the moment.
Great stuff! dougPS: I didn't post privately because I've been meaning to tell everyone how much I love PHP...