My first post on this list... be gentle! :)
To my mind, if I have a running server, and make a config change (*any*
change, could be complete garbage), then the sequence: apache2 -t /etc/init.d/apache2 reload .. should either error at the -t test, or should be running after the reload.
Rather than changing to another web server, perhaps it would be better to run an identically configured version of Apache on a test server so that you can try out configuration changes there?
Richard