I dont see php going anywhere, In 2000 when SP waas discontinued, PHP was at version 3, they are now at version 5 and are continuing to release updates regularly.
the if statement i gave was missing a closing parenthesis, it should be:
<?php if((isset($_GET['formerror']))?$_GET['formerror']:"" == "1") { ?>
by default PHP does not have error reporting turned on.
either edit the php.ini file to set error reporting or you can add the following code at line 1 of your page to turn it on:
<?php error_reporting(E_ALL); ini_set('display_errors','on'); ?>