Sure, but newbies don't care about "web servers other than Apache". They will just use Apache, or whatever can deliver instant gratification. And non-newbies, in general, don't use PHP to start new projects.

Part of my point is that I think if we, the development community, want to popularize frameworks with better engineering design, e.g. RoR, Python+Django/Flask, and so on, we'll need to think more carefully about what the newbie experience is like. Because newbies look for instant gratification with something (anything!) and then build up and out from whatever that something is. If the easiest door to open is PHP, they'll keep building with PHP for years. Unfortunately, the easiest door to open is still PHP by a longshot.

As someone who helps people to learn programming, I'd like to challenge your statement that PHP "is an easiest door to open.. by a long shot".

The reality is that the easiest way for a beginner to do a finished product is a make as static HTML webpage with Javascript fetching dynamic data from a remote datastore/website. The cognitive load of request-response model from the client side view is much smaller than from a server side and you actually write your first code in any browser console.

The problem with making things simple for newbies is the knock on effect of making it hard for non-newbies to do non-newbie things.

Sure, we can then work around the allowances we make for newbies, but complexity is the bane of reliable software.