Heretical opinion: don't. Apache is a piece of shit. Use a real webserver like lighttpd or nginx, or even Tornado.

Until you work on an actual webserver, you have little appreciation for how badly Apache manages to screw up what is conceptually a very simple operation. Then again, considering that "Apache" comes from "a patchy [webserver]", and the codebase grew organically during a time when nobody really knew what the web would be used for, it isn't that surprising.