I've moved almost exclusively to Nginx, once you get your head round how to do the "Apache-isms" (great potential neologism that :D) in Nginx configurations it

I've moved almost exclusively to Nginx, once you get your head round how to do the "Apache-isms" (great potential neologism that :D) in Nginx configurations it becomes second nature. Cherokee is a possible alternative too; that has some default configs for Wordpress etc. that work well. But for anything custom I found it a nightmare to get "just so". Nginx is a neat alternative to Varnish as well; for example I'm having great success sitting it in front of a Cherokee site (serving the http) to provide SSL :)