Conclusion: Dropbox and Apache don't mix

  I had this great idea a few months back, create a top-level folder in my Dropbox hierarchy where each sub-folder would be the name of a host, like listings.opml.org and daveriver.scripting.com. Then one of my servers, on the same Dropbox net, would make the folder the root of the Apache htdocs directory. A script would run once a minute and look for new folders and update the vhosts.conf file. Then any file I dropped in any of the folders, once it synched would be available on the web.
  I was using this system, but the server would flatline a lot, and so would many of the other machines on my Dropbox network. I didn't know what was causing the flatlining until I decided to split things up and make one server into three, so I could isolate which components were interfering. Lo and behold, the machine that flatlined perfectly was the one serving up these fancy folders. So I uninstalled Dropbox on that machine, and started replacing all the cute bits with FTP calls. Yeah it's not so much fun as the magic of Dropbox, but here's the A-B comparison:
  Bottom-line: Dropbox is good for sharing files with your colleagues and across your devices, but it can't, at this time, be used to manage a static server running Apache. Too bad, cause it was such a neat idea.