Some days, I feel like I should be paying other people to be even allowed to log in to their server, let alone touch the configuration on anything that could be used in production.

Some notes for future reference --

First, DNS and BIND isn't magic. You can't just make stuff up and expect the computer to know what you mean (retardo). The DNS zone name in the named.conf file has to match the name of the domain it's authorative for. You can't just leave arbitrary parts of the domain off and hope it knows what you mean.

Second, if you spend half an hour making changes to a config file, and no matter what you do, it's just not having the expected effect on the service you're setting up, consider the idea that you're working on the wrong config file.

Also, if you're going to be so absent minded as to leave two copies of PHP on a server, both called 'php', both in your path, don't even bother to complain when it causes problems.

If you setup an anti-DoS module on your webserver... and when you benchmark your webserver, over half the requests fail, maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's doing what you configured it to do.