Hey Bob, I personally believe in this rule that try everything at DEV & after checking it, will go for live site. I myself also use Git,much familiar with it.
1st Issue: '500 internal server error',ofter occurs due to mis configured drupal core file or folder, mis configured web server file or folder & corrupted files.
-Recently I have solved this issue by removing the comment sign at 'RewriteBase/'
Ah, I forget to mention that Godaddy, used modules, messaging modules may be the reason of the problem as well.
Imagefiled Crop crops an image into an image filed.Ver-1 added a widget to regular image fields & ver-2 added special filed. I need to use the suitable one as per need.
-Also fatal error be fixed by applying right patch.I have faced the fatal error, that was caused due to hook_permissions being incorrectly written.
2nd issue is simple. Generally this happened after the changes to reset.css. Need to use
strong {
font-weight: bold;
}
em {
font-style: italic;
}
I have applied it another project it succeed.
3rd: I must tell you that when add a core image field to a content type to display an image, the preview thumbnail doesn't display on the edit page when uploading an image. on click of Upload button, placeholder for image & image icon be visible. Clicking the save button, displays the image in the content.
Anyways, until, unless, I can't view your existing files, I will not be able to suggest you an exact solution. Please let me know when you share your screen?