Thanks for getting back to me, Lester Chan, the problem seemed to resolve itself.
I restarted the process, but this time did not install wordpress again through the dreamhost panel (I didn’t mention this before, but it’s what I did), and it worked.
I used wp-dbmanager to restore the backups. The files were the same as the first time I tried. To be honest, I don’t understand why it didn’t work the first time, when I installed wp through the host, but I’m glad it worked the second time.
