Is it safe to upgrade Apache?

Coming from my commecial webhost what I'm accustomed to doing is simply setting up .htaccess in the protected folder that references AuthUserFile in a folder outside the web structure.  It's actually encrypted so it wouldn't matter anyways but oh well.

My web page is basically just my own links and useless crap but I also have links to my home automation system that use a transparent proxy allowing me to control lighting, security system, temperature, etc.  I want to keep that stuff behind a password wall while leaving the rest of the site open to the web.

.htaccess is simple but it just won't run on my ReadyNAS because of the missing module (maybe more missing modules too - I'm not sure what would break next).  

The recommendation to stay within the 2.2 release is a good one.  I'm just scared to death to screw with the readynas through SSH.  I already lost frontview once through some changes to httpd.conf and it took me a while to sort through what I'd done.  

Perhaps it's time to upgrade to a newer model.  The processor on this SPARC based machine is awfully slow.

Any idea if there's a way to install a single module for apache without doing a full upgrade?

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