I think ASP.NET is superior for writing advanced and big web sites. I use PHP for smaller projects. I think both has a future.
ASP.NET is awesome and I've just used it on a couple of new sites. I'm a newbie so I can't post the links. PHP is just a mess of inconsistent function names and spaghetti HTML/code. I got a compliment from a guy on another forum who was impressed with my page loading speed. That's due to ASP.NET's built in caching. One thing I have changed is to move from SQL Server to MySQL. MySQL rocks, and it works great with ASP.NET.
It doesn't have to be. PHP is a general purpose programming language and you can build up complex, organized software with it just like you can using the ASP.NET framework. And there's plenty of potential for .NET applications to be a mix of spaghetti code too.
With ASP.net Core the entire paradigm shifts to all kind of new possibilities. Self hosted Apps, Krestel Server, No dependency of IIS and Cross platform with support for Linux and iOS. A huge leap from the time this thread was started.