We have used the apache web server for some time now, and have written many scripts to pull information out of a database and generate virtualhost config files, webdav config files, ssl config files, etc. I am wondering if there is a more dynamic way to interact with apache configs, such that apache might use a database for it's configuration, or put these configs on an NFS share that all the servers in our network can see, or use a configuration management tool like Chef or Puppet to distribute them?

Looking for experiences, ideas, and theories on a better way to manage apache. Any suggestions on a different web server that supports webdav, and is more flexible in it's configuration are welcome as well.

well there are plenty of Puppet modules written to do this. Personally I would say these things are more hassle that they're worth. You can write a bunch of independent config files to drop them into conf.d. Managing distribution of these files by puppet is easy enough, but my own efforts to dynamically create them through templates was often more trouble than it's worth. if you think your virtual hosts are going to be VERY standardised, then you may like to use puppet dashboard of foreman to allow you to pull config from a web gui through to templated puppet configs. But only if its very standard.