Ive never looked into redwood but always thought of it as a server less framework à la

- spa served from s3 - each function it's own lambda - dynamoDB database

Was that completely wrong and how can you do server components without a server otherwise?

Redwood is simply a fullstack JS/TS framework, there's not much more to it.

Theres not much to it! Like swinging a golf club. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqFyX8-djLM

Why not just using PHP?