Kudos for saying that even as a massive PHP hater :)

IMO there is a reason why Wordpress is so popular (Disclaimer: massive Wordpress hater here!). Because of ease of install, more people can upload some folder in an (Web)FTP client than spinning up a Docker Container somewhere to host the latest JS Framework of the day just to host their little page or to show their content.

There is simply no need for bundlers, preprocessors and often not even [a lot of] package management (I'm aware of PHP composer though)

And exactly that ease of install is what could IMO make the Fediverse more democratic than having to run a container at some VPS that only a comparetively few people are able to do.