One thing I forgot to include in the previous post:

Either Dan never had our MySQL server’s root password, or he lost it along the way. You’d think he’d, I don’t know, ask someone for it, but no. So, instead of creating new databases for each new site (which he was unable to do without root or another privileged user), he just jammed all the tables for whatever new site he was making into an existing database that he already had access to. So we’ve got a database that’s for a registration page for some corporate event in 2007 (and is named as such) that is packed full of tables for a whole mess of other sites.

sigh… yeah…