Tammy, some random thoughts, have you considered this as an option:
- Create new 2.4
- Backup and restore courses from your old Moodle
Here it gets a bit tricky:
Plugins. Whatever way you upgrade/migrate, yoou'll probably have plugin problems. It all depends. We have been caught by loss of functionality in 1.9 > 2.4, and in other ways, helped by it. Also, some plugins we had in 1.9 have been replaced by built in capacities. It's the 1.9 plugins you see as indispensible and are NOT ready for 2.4 where you will have the problem. SO: make sure you can specify exactly what you want and you may be able to get it in another way. Maybe.
Shifting members. In one site I did this:
- E-mailed members in the old Moodle saying who needs to shift over, and I created accounts with a spreadsheet.
- Latecomers just created their own accounts manually.
I found a LOT of spam accounts.
How you go partly depends on
- the number and complexity of the courses
- the dependency you have on the plugins, and a LOT of plugins have gone west in the shift from 1.9 > 2.0
- if you can do this in slow motion? Run 2 sites for a while?
On the other hand, to be reassuring: I do not believe we will ever have a fraught upgrade like the 1.9.x > 2.x again. Also the plugin future is likely to be better, with upgrade from the admin interface coming.
The question: which of the possible hard and difficult routes to take. The advantage of the backup/restore is a cleaner leaner database. Probably.
and also: this is a belief statement - Moodle 2.4 is better in it's scorm handling. You may like it. No you are not being too paranoid.
Good luck.
-Derek