If a spotlight search does not reveal your "domain.sites" file then you have lost it and there's no way back.
Not necessarily.
Many people have been using Domain.sites file management utilities, the latest of which is MultiSites for iWeb. This utility will actually move your Domain.sites file from it's default location into a new directory in your Documents folder, and will "cloak" it under a different file name. In this case, Spotlight will not find it, but it will still be on the hard drive.
Not trying to be combative or argumentative, but this is worth pointing out, as this has caused some unnecessary anquish for some. See this thread in the '06 Forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1109921&tstart=15
As Old Toad points out in the thread, it's probably best to stay away from any utility which moves the Domain.sites file from it's default location and stores it in this manner. (MultiSites latest version
does claim to offer an alternative location for the file).
-Mark