I agree with you: strong community support is essential in the survival of any language/technology. PHP has a large community and a dizzying number of packages. That helps a lot. But I can think of a number of languages (Python, Perl, Ruby) that also have large communities and vast numbers of libraries at their disposal. Therefore, I don't think you could pick PHP over any of those just because "it has more libraries".
Furthermore, Elixir, while it has fewer libraries and a smaller community, is growing fast. The core language is also exceptionally well documented and discoverable. It has libraries that cover essentially all your common use cases.
I guess what I want to say is, I'm happy PHP is getting better for all the programmers stuck using it. There's no reason to use it for anything new, because there's always a better tool out their for your job.
Furthermore, Elixir, while it has fewer libraries and a smaller community, is growing fast. The core language is also exceptionally well documented and discoverable. It has libraries that cover essentially all your common use cases.
I guess what I want to say is, I'm happy PHP is getting better for all the programmers stuck using it. There's no reason to use it for anything new, because there's always a better tool out their for your job.