not sure what the problem was with quoting but if you see any posts from Friday where it didnt work for you simply go to edit your post and then save it, this should kick the coding back into life. New posts should work again ......
Frontpage issue also sorted. It was a coding mistake in a block I added that didnt generate any error in the past but did when we converted the collation (not sure why). Solution was to correct the code so it was correct !
Scotty's post in Quote function was marked as the answer