Everything works except the child site creation

This morning I took an existing site http://www.max-opp.com, that had been installed as a 2.92 site, and upgraded successfully to a 3.0 site.

I was concerned about the wp_ prefix security issues, and did not want to create a multi-site that might have cascading vulnerabilities, so I successfully followed all procures for renaming the wp_ prefixes in the database and then I and followed the directions for turning it into a multi-user site.

I now have the SuperAdmin menu and I tried to create a child site, “rant”.

I was sent an acknowledgment of success, but the site was not created, nor was a subdirectory “rant.” This is the error message that I get when trying to access it:
Firefox can't find the server at rant.max-opp.com

Here is my .htaccess file:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2 [L]

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule  ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule  ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

I also tried the .htaccess file without the first two and last two lines.

These are excepts from the wp_config file:

/** Added these lines per instructions to convert to multi-press network installation 7/5/2010 */

define( 'MULTISITE', true );
define( 'SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', true );
$base = '/';
define( 'DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'max-opp.com' );
define( 'PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/' );
define( 'SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );
define( 'BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1 );

There are also some lines of cod that contain security keys that I have redacted:

define( 'AUTH_SALT', ';| ;redacted' );
define( 'SECURE_AUTH_SALT', 'redacted' );
define( 'LOGGED_IN_SALT', 'redacted);

Suggestions will be appreciated