I'm happy to report that my retrofit of apache on top of tomcat was successful.
The reading was somewhat lengthy and I certainly had a couple of trial and error configurations going on but all-in-all I now have all the granular controls on my web server that I have missed for so long now.
The control files ported nicely to the mail server. Unfortunately, the web server required an extended ramp up given my unfamiliar grip on the mechanics involved in making all the new distro components work harmoniously.
Now, all that safety net that I built into those previous iterations of the blog are back in full force and I'll be tweaking these more as time progresses.
You have to crawl before you can walk ... and this new version of the OS has certainly made me crawl around a lot getting to this point.