gaeorn - you hit the nail on the head. I never had any intention of updating the server or database code once I had gotten everything up and running so I always skipped the steps in all of the guides where they said "we'll put our source code into a different directory and make symbolic links so that we can update easily in the future". I thought I was keeping things more simple but I probably complicated them a bit
Anyway, thanks again, so much, for the help. I wasn't kidding when I said that this has been a 15-month struggle. And although I've probably tacked on another 80 hours of labor into getting it working over the last week, it feels pretty good to finally be moving forward.
Thanks,
rainwalker