Did you manually compile Apache as you described in this thread?
http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=1315
If you did, then uninstall the manually compiled version and install Apache from ports.
The ports collection applies several patches to Apache, mainly stability and security stuff (i.e. stuff you want), so this alone is reason enough to use ports IMO.
I can not see a single advantage to compiling Apache manually instead of using ports.