Database Nightmare - Attributes - Scripts Required to Fix Major Issues w/ Categories

[limelites]

OK, where to begin! We're trying to move our website from this:

http://www.silkblooms.co.uk/ over onto this www.silkblooms.co.uk/sbx/ It's still got an awful lot of work to be done as it's eventually going to be based on http://www.karenmillen.com with the Ajax auto load and filters. We've ran into a major problem though, read on.

I am not a web designer. Not by any stretch of the imagination. When I built the existing website I basically taught myself everything by reading and writing on forums, experimenting and fumbling through. So, when I was looking for a way to filter products (way back in the beginning) I came up with the idea of cross-linking them all into categories. What should I should have done is assign attributes! So, for example, all of the red wedding flowers on the site will be cross-linked into a hidden category called "red". It's the same for all of the attributes on all 6300 products!

So, instead of having 6300 products with attributes like "what is it" - "who is it for" - "what colour is it" - "what price range is it" - "what shape is it"..... we have categories called, "red", "white", "blue"...... "rounded", "cascade"...... "mini posy"..... "corsage"..... etc. and all the products are cross-linked into several categories.

The new website needs them to be assigned with attributes instead. This is the only way that the Ajax auto load and the price slider will be able to work.

So, I've been racking my brain trying to think of a quick fix (well, quicker than manually going through every product and assigning attributes).

I'm thinking of moving all "flowers" into a master category for flowers but before I move them I think we could use the category location to run a script that will assign attributes to all products in that category. So, if I go to the "red" category I need to come up with a script that will assign the new "red" attribute to every product in that category. I need to repeat this process in every category until each product has a complete new attribute set. I'm just not sure how to write such a script so I'd really appreciate some help from anyone who's good with this type of thing?

I also need to run some site-wide scripts that will assign price attributes. So a script that says, "IF price=64.99 then assign attribute 50to80" and so on.

Once everything has the new attributes then I need to move all the products to suitable master categories and come up with a good, logical structure for the new filter via attributes system.

Hope I've not rambled on too much and hopefully someone will be able to help me out here. The database we're using is a complete mess and I'm really keen to get the new site up and running.

[limelites]

@Limitless Thank you for the PM. I tried to reply to you but your mailbox is full and it won't let me send.

It's really kind of you to offer some help and if you're able to then I would really appreciate it.

I already have the DB backed up in a gzip file but TBH I'm not sure how to drop the un-needed tables as I'm no DB expert.

[Limitless]

Cleaned up my inbox.