Not a stupid question at all; I just wasn't clear what it was. :)

Registry pretty much does the trick. Some modules to check out are Apache::DBI and possibly Apache::Template.

As far as getting into special settings in the server, that's where you get advanced. mod_perl gives you full access to Apache internals via perl code in handlers. Once you start writing handlers, you can respond to requests however you like, but you'll need to read a decent amount of documentation before you can really take advantage of these features. Note that this requires knowledge of Apache as much as mod_perl.