After fiddling with the site all day and half the night, I ended up just doing a fresh install of 1.7, importing the saved database information and config files from my previous site as well as changing the SALT line to the previous one so that my members didn't have to change their passwords.

Everything seems to be more or less honky dory now except that when I implement the mobile option (something my site members were quite excited about and the primary reason for my update) using it causes a blank white screen with no option to go back to the desktop version even if refresh or back arrow is used.

Attempting to modify the layout in the admin panel caused the site to crash for some reason, so I'm afraid to keep messing with it since the site has been down for a couple of days with the upgrade incident and I really don't want to inconvenience my members any more than I have to.

The site uses Showcase theme that came with Oxwall.  No custom code or modifications to the native theme aside from changing the header image to our logo. 

At this point I'm at something of a loss as to what to do and have simply hidden the mobile option for the time being.  I would really like for my site members to have a mobile options since most of them seem to access the site via smartphone, but I don't want my desktop site functionality to be compromised in the process.

Any help or ideas for troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated  TIA:)