Sorry to would-be readers who saw Site Temporarily Unavailable error id: "bad_httpd_conf" for an inderminate number of hours. "Now what?", I wailed...

Fortunately, this was easy to fix. It's not a Drupal thing (whew!), as spidersilk points out here. It's a glitch chez Dreamhost, which the ISP addresses in their support wiki. Calling up and re-setting my domain hosting settings fixed things within minutes.

I maintain that Dreamhost offers a great deal for any Drupaler who wants massive space and unlimited databases to host as many non-critical sites as s/he can cook up. But as with anything, if you've got a critical business need, don't hesitate to look into pricier, premium alternatives (like hosting at Pair, or countless others).