After a rather time consuming and disasterous transfer from plesk to cpanel dedicated server.. I'm at the point of shooting myself.

I'm noticing some strange things, such as random mysql_num_rows returning errors like "Database not found" when some return fine..?

And then there's the other thing.. where extra slashes are being added to my $_POST data.. is this a new feature in one of the latest versions of php? Because for all my mysql variable inserts have mysql_real_escape_string.. do i need to remove those now?

Do you really need control panel to run a dedicated server?

Extra slashes may be caused by some magic_gpc_quotes = on. Mysql may eventually die due to the lack of memory. You should carefully revise your php and mysql configs, tune them appropriately and restart both mysql and apache.

Ok, I figured it out by myself hehe.

mysql_num_rows was caused by a previous query error further up that was hidden.

and the slashes, exactly as you said..

My question now is.. what's the standard preference? Have that magic_quotes option on or off?

off, if you do not want unpredictable results