Howard Miller

Your moodledata folder should not be accessible on the web. Simple as that. Put it somewhere that is not web served.

Nothing to worry about, in that case.

What CSS files are you talking about? Moodle doesn't have "custom CSS files" - unless you mean you customised core code. Which while you CAN you probably should not. You are finding out why. There's no guarantee that the same files will work in the newer version. You'll need to test that for yourself.

What you really wanted to do was to create a custom theme. It's not as bad as it sounds, as (apart from some boilerplate) you only need to supply the bits that are different.

I'm probably not understanding you. But... you need to be logged in to participate in Moodle activities (even as a guest - although that just involves clicking the "I am a guest" button).

The guest user is still a real user. It just doesn't have a password. Moodle has to *know* that you are the guest; not a "proper" user.

What do the database connections claim that they are doing when you run 'processlist'? I'm guessing 'sleeping' but it's probably worth a check.