Ok, big load of information. This is the situation as it stands now.
I have not attempted to do any upgrades to the ORIGINAL gallery install.
I downgraded PHP to 5.2 on my new server, unpacked the backup of the original install and it works perfectly (version 1.4.
.
I have managed to upgrade the new install to 1.4.20
If I go to 1.4.21 it breaks the main category images - was BBcode in category descriptions removed in this version?
Apart from my custom login box, everything else works fine.
I talked to the person who originally made the custom theme that I am using and she explained the situation. It was intended that certain sub-categories would have their own themes. As this was apparently not supported in 1.4.8, some custom coding was done in order to achieve it. There was also some hard coding done in order to allow adverts at the side of the page (also not supported in 1.4.8 I am told). These modifications were done by a user I believe to be of this forum, possibly a member of the development team (I can't remember the name but will find out) in return for payment.
Obviously my end goal is to get the gallery up to date on the latest version of 1.5. Due to the custom coding done on my gallery, this is not something I would be able to achieve by myself, and my theme would obviously need re-writing. If anyone would be willing to take on this challenge (basically getting my gallery onto the current version of cpg, looking and working exactly like it does now) then I will be happy to offer payment.
I am fairly confident that this is the largest install of coppermine gallery currently in the world and it has been going for over 7 years without fault. We have over 150,000 registered users. 1290274 files in 19501 albums and 192 categories with 57461 comments viewed 18862714 times. I was informed by the person who originally made the theme that at one point our gallery was actually being used by your development team for testing due to its sheer size.
I would be very grateful if anyone can help me get this sorted. I have this morning transitioned over to using the new server, the name servers should be updating sometime around now so my new site is pretty much live.
Thanks, and I hope you all had a great christmas.