PHP succeed precisely because of how it executes .php files directly as scripts from a single running instance. This allowed it to be the shared hosting solution because it uses far far less resources than a similar python solution.
Python is great if you want to run your own server or VM per site. It's not so great if you want to run a shared server and it's shared servers (not VMs) that brought the price down and therefore opened the floodgates of allowing people to run their own sites cheaply and easily.
Python is great if you want to run your own server or VM per site. It's not so great if you want to run a shared server and it's shared servers (not VMs) that brought the price down and therefore opened the floodgates of allowing people to run their own sites cheaply and easily.