If all you hate is PHP, there are other server side languages that you can try such as Ruby which emphasise code readability, and Node.js which could possibly let you interact with your C2 game directly being a javascript technology itself. Both languages have free hosting services out there, with limits of course but anything free is a generous gesture.
Node.js is still very new and feels fiddly, so I would recommend Ruby, which has a hilarious introduction book that motivated me to learn it in the first place.
If your real concern is any server side language, that's going to be difficult on the "user login" part because the infrastructure for logging in has always been a client-server architecture.