Joomla Based Website Upgrade/Migration

Current Setup: The website is hosted at [login to view URL] It is a 4 years old Joomla based website. Joomla version is 1.5.9. PHP version is 4.4.9 Following additional components are already installed: Fireboad Forum 1.0.4 AEC Subscription Manager 12.6 Community Board 1.2 We have Google Adsense code posted as Joomla module. Also we have Google Analytics code posted as a module as well. Business Model: The website offers video based IT training on subscription model. Few demo videos are accessible to public. For the rest subscription fees is charged. AEC Subscription Manager is used to manage PayPal subscriptions. There are 350 active members and about 700 video based articles. Videos are hosted on a separate streaming server. AEC automatically picks up activities taking place in PayPal. When a user cancels her subscription in PayPal, the website account is automatically cancelled. Similarly when a subscription is renewed at PayPal, the website account is automatically extended. The Project Objective and Strategy: We need to upgrade Joomla and AEC versions. We want to use a different forum than Fireboard as we are not happy with FireBoard. We have selected Kunena. You can propose another one if you like. We do not want to touch the current website and hence we have decided to do a fresh install of Joomla and components and then do the migration. We are open to the route where we first create a site of existing website and do the upgrades on the c l o n e without touching original website. That way we will not have to do the data migration. What is Already Finished: We have installed Joomla 1.7 on a separate godaddy account as the original account does not support PHP 5.x. Following additional components are installed: AEC Subscription Manager 14.6 Kunena Forum 1.7.1 This can be redone as well if need be. We have access to AEC 14.6. Kunena 1.7.1 is available for free. What Needs to be Done: Migrate the website including categories, articles, forum content, subscriptions, adsense code, analytics code, and the domain from older account to the new one. The new AEC installation should be able to recognize existing subscriptions. Following Should be Included in Test Script: We want to cover following points in testing: Are creation of a new user and PayPal subscription payment working ok. Is AEC recognizing existing subscriptions? Cancel an existing subscription and see if AEC cancels that account on website as well. Renewal of an existing subscription results into an automatic extension of the account. Is posting of a new article working ok. Following Needs to be Discussed: We want following points to be covered in the proposal: Is new install+migration stragedy ok or should we look into c l o n e+upgrade option instead? How would we control godaddy security? Will we need to share our godaddy account access? What would be the strategy to move domain from older goddady account to the new one? Are there any risks in terms of downtime? How would we rollback if something goes wrong? Both Godaddy accounts are owned by us. We are open to fixed cost proposal or an hourly rate. We are looking for an honest candidate who can deliver the work at reasonable cost.