Magento troubleshooting and updates

Some clean up items need to be finished on this live site. Troubleshooting and advice from a Magento expert on how to handle a few of these issues would be very helpful.

- Update to Magento 1.8 from 1.7
- *possibly* a new responsive theme, if necessary.
- Correct some missing items in the admin panel
- New associated products are not being associated - troubleshoot
- Speed up the website.
May be other issues to look at.

This will be hourly, ongoing as long as necessary.

Please provide examples of live Magento sites you have worked on and references.

I would like to have you look at the site and make recommendations. The developer will be chosen based on those recommendations.