[mistwang]

1. Excuse my ignorance but how do I find out what user is running Apache? If I have already installed LS, and followed default commands (installed with user 'nobody') then what can I do now?

"ps -ef | grep httpd" or check /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf, it is nobody, you don't need to do anything, otherwise, remove the lsws directory, run install.sh again.

2. Also, isn't this the less optimal way of running LS -- through Apache config?

If you want to manage your sites through Cpanel, it is the way to go.

3. I did not get your point about port offset at all. Should I use port 81 for LSWS, or not? Is LiteSpeed different from LSWS (so it would seem from your post). Presuming I need to change the port, where should I go to change this, is there a lshttpd.conf file or something?

There are two ports you need to specify during installation, amdin port and service port, admin port is default to 7080, service port is default to 8088. you probably changed service port to 81.
When port offset is specified, LSWS will use port "80 + <port offset>" for sites configured in httpd.conf, if you set "port offset" to "1", the port to be used is 81, which is the same as the service port specified during installation, it may or may not work, to avoid the possible confliction, you should not set "port offset" to "1", but use something else.

Hope this helps.

After everything has been verified to be working properly with Litespeed, you can stop Apache, set "port offset" to "0", restart LSWS, then LiteSpeed will replace Apache by taking over traffic on port 80.