So I’ve run my website on the same server for years… I kept an old version of WordPress because newer ones were incompatible with my database, and besides, it was all working fine.
Then, er, it wasn’t. And trust it to be on the day I had something important to promote, that the whole thing keeled over and died. So fresh start, fresh server, fresh database, fresh WP install, fresh content (because I couldn’t back up the old stuff… blech). Bear with the housekeeping…