Users, groups, rights and apache please advice

["Ron Rademaker" <r.rademaker@virtualbuilding.nl>]

Hello,

I got the following situation:
    A server (debian stable) running a number of domains 
    For each domain I've create a group, and everybody that has
something to do with this domain is in that group
    I want everybody in the group to be able to change the website of
that domain, and everybody who's not in that group shouldn't even be
able to read the files (because of plain text database passwords that
can often be found in files like db.php)
    So I use a umask of 007, everything looks good so far
    However Apache doesn't quite like it, Apache can't read the files
(obviously) and the Group directive works only for CGI :-( (within a
virtualhost)

Anybody has any advice for me on how to make this work? Perfect solution
for me would be an Apache module with something like a User and a Group
directive that do within a virtualhost exactly what they do outside a
VirtualHost.

Thank you in advance,
Ron Rademaker

PS. I'm not on the list so I would very much appreciate it if you would
CC me any reactions.