We’re back!

After experiencing downtime for three days, we are back… It turns out the best solution to these type of stupid MT4 problems is threatening it with an ass-kicking… Should have thought of that much earlier!
The problem was that my index page suddenly stopped publishing… It was set to publish dynamically, along with all the archives, with all options enabled. This, for some reason, stopped working. After restoring database backups, reinstalling mt, and going through the Dreamhost support ticket system for a few days (they were very helpful this time – thanks guys! – but to no avail), I tried something funky. I changes the publishing directory for just the index page and set all files to publish statically (which is unacceptable for the Entry archives because comments time out), and the index page published in the new directory. Then I changed it back to the original directory and it finally published! Then I went through a series of static/dynamic publishing setting tests and found through trail and error that the variable responsible for this weird behavior is:
Use Publishing Queue
Use background publishing queue for publishing static pages for this blog
Requires the use of a cron job to publish pages in the background.
If this variable is enabled, the original problem of the index page not getting published reappears.
So the solution is unchecking this box AND setting Publishing Method to “Publish only Archive Templates dynamically.” I’m sure I tried this combination a couple times over the past few days to no avail, I suspect the key was changing the publishing directory once and successfully publishing the index once.
The funny thing is, this problem came on suddenly. My site went down at a time when I didn’t even touch the blog, so it makes me suspect there was a change on the server side. The Dreamhost support guys said there hadn’t been any changes, but it’s very strange that it came on so suddenly.
Anyway, the important thing to remember is: When in doubt, just threaten to beat the shit out of your server/software/settings/deity of your choosing. You probably feel that you have nothing to lose by inciting God’s wrath at that point anyway.