Upgraded from 1.4.27 to 1.6.08 today

[MechMykl]

Dreamhost has been permanently migrating all of their shared hosting users to PHP 7 this month. I held onto my 1.4.x installation for as long as I could (thinking that was the only way to keep the "classic" theme), but made the full jump to this decade today without issue. I'm guessing others will be in the same boat soon. Here are my notes for anyone feeling a little lost:

• Disabled all plugins; backed up database and file tree.
• Upgraded from 1.4.27 -> 1.5.48: https://sourceforge.net/projects/coppermine/files/Coppermine/1.5.x/
• Upgraded from 1.5.48 -> 1.6.08: https://github.com/coppermine-gallery/cpg1.6.x/releases
• Made the switch from MySQL to MySQLi on 1.6.x when prompted.
• Tested PHP versions 7.0, 7.2, 7.3, and 7.4 all as working; chose 7.4. FastCGI seems to cause cache delays so I turned it back off.
• Pulled the most recent "classic", "classic_vstrip", and "classic_w_drop" themes from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/coppermine/files/Themes/1.5.x/
• It looks like "classic_w_drop" is the closest to the original 1.4.x version. Planning to tweak it for full design parity.

CPG continues to stand the test of time. I've been around since 1.3.3(!) in 2005(!!). From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU current and past contributors / mods. I genuinely hope you feel a sense of pride in keeping all of our memories alive and accessible.

[ron4mac]

Thank you for chronicling your experience in moving from 1.4.x to 1.6.x. I'm sure it will prove helpful to others. You might look at the current water_drop theme as a starting point for your theme tweaks. Just copy it to another folder first.
[ hello from Webster ]