Hyper123

If the other setups work fine there has to be something unique about this install. I would try removing plugins first to see if that helps and go from there.

NextGen Gallery can do what your after if I understand you correctly. You can get it at https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

You can use the excerpt tag https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags/the_excerpt

Upgrading usually isn’t to bad but sometimes there can be issues. Before upgrading make sure to backup your files and database incase there is an issue. You would then overwrite the current WordPress files with the new ones and visit the admin for a link to upgrade the database. Your old theme should work on 2.5 with little to no tweaks and all your content should remain, but if there is a major issue there is always the backup to go back to. You should try the upgrade since 2.1 is no longer supported and no security or bugfixes will be released for it.

You could use the built in password feature. When writing or editing a post or page scroll down to password protect this post and set a password there.

You could make a category for that and then only show posts from that category on the home page. I think the code you be

<?php
   if (is_home()) {
      query_posts("cat=5");
   }
?>

You would change the 5 to whatever the category id is that you choose for the home page.

The issue might be with your webhost not being setup to allow your site to connection to google via ssl. Try contacting them about it.

It looks like the line after that issue in your rss has

<b>Warning</b>: stristr() [<a href='function.stristr'>function.stristr</a>]: Empty delimiter in <b>/home/dchea0/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wassup/wassup.php</b> on line <b>2093</b><br />

You could try turning off that plugin and see if that helps.

It is a known issue https://trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/6842 and will be fixed in 2.5.2 . You can until then try this patch https://cubegames.net/blog/2008/04/27/reset-password-bug-patch-and-fixed-files/

I had these same issues with WP 2.5.1 but not with 2.5. Try installing 2.5 in a sub folder to see if it works fine. Remember since it is an older version you shouldn’t use it on a live site. https://www.ads-software.com/wordpress-2.5.zip

Try turning off permalinks and see if that helps.

Still no ideas?

You can try the plugin OneClick Installer that will let you either upload a zip or give it a link to a zip of a theme or plugin and it will take it and unzip it to the correct folder.

If you have FTP access you can go to wp-content/themes and upload the theme folder there.

Have you tried turning off all plugins to see of one of them are to blame?