OP here. Only the backend is written in PHP (it is very simple PHP) and that may change (probably Python, maybe Node.js). It's only a small part of the code, most of the code is javascript that runs in the browser. Initially, I am working on Apache and PHP because a lot of what I work on is Wordpress, but Nginx certainly supports PHP as well. Note that it doesn't require your code to be written in PHP, only that your server has the correct modules installed. If you use phpmyadmin you have already pretty much installed everything needed.