On NetTuts.com today there's a new article that suggests that 2013 is the "Year of PHP" and how recent additions to the language are going to effect its future.

2012 was an excellent year for the PHP community, thanks to many badly needed features being added to version 5.4, as well as the countless projects, advancing PHP to the next level. In this article, I’d like to review a handful of the issues that people had with PHP in the past, and provide a glimpse at why 2013 just may be the year of PHP!

They talk about some of the hostility (stigma) that's always been present when people talk about using PHP and a reminder that PHP, as good as it is, isn't perfect either. They talk some about the current state of the language and community and about how tools like Composer and methods like test-driven development (as well as major features being added to the language) have it poised for even more growth in the next year.