Very sorry about that - I’m very very very new to coding as a whole and even newer to this website or posting on forums myself. Usually I’m just reading posts to find answers, ha!
Well - I didn’t know I have this problem and I guess I may care in the future for sure. At the moment I need a working program so it can begin production - like DaveMaxwell said. I’m SURE beyond reason that the coding has major issues but until I have a product to work with there’s not much to be done. I will of course look into this PDO and updating PHP - if it isn’t going to break a few thousand pages then I don’t mind pushing that button now. But of course this is going to take a full round of me backing up all of my data prior to an update to make sure. Thank you for the concerns. For the time being I will be trying this ranking structure and post my results as I get to them.