There’s no need to turn it off permanently, put it in permissive instead. It’s pretty much the same as disabled, except that it logs warnings to the log files and keeps selinux contexts active. These can then easily be fixed and addressed, and you can easily switch it to “enforced” without having the situation you have now.
Selinux is there to help secure the server, disabling is not the option to be taking. Especially if the server will be accessible publicly. Even if not accessible publicly, having it enabled is still recommended.
Putting it in disabled mode means you lose selinux contexts on files, and then when enabling again without relabelling causes problems like you are experiencing now.
Thanks for the comment. It ill be a few weeks before I can get back to this but, yes, the server is on the Inet. I have come to the conclusion that if you are publicly accessible it is only a matter of time before you get hacked so I make sure there is nothing that would be a problem if were published in the newspaper on the server and I do have a complete backup of the web pages and variable information so it can easily be restored. Selinux has caused enough grief on this new server that I am unsure that in the long run it won’t be more trouble than its worth. I’ll give it another try and see if I can get Apache to coexist with it or resolve the problem some other way.