Well, I figured this out … turns out the only difference wasn’t the PHP version, it was also SQL. The production server runs postgresql instead of mySQL, and was escaping using double quotes (thus making all of the info submitted blank).
All of the WordPress posts and pages seemed to update just fine, but for some reason this didn’t. Anyway, I changed the escape method and it works fine now.
All plugins were deactivated and removed.
This is an exact copy from a dev server to live, worked fine on the dev server. No changes to scripts (the only change was the domain name setting, from the dev domain to the live one).
The only difference between the servers is that it’s php 5.4.x on the dev and 5.3.3 on the live, but updating the live server to a newer version of PHP isn’t something I will be able to do. Could the PHP version be the problem?
If so, is there a way to run an older version of the layerslider while keeping the current version of Enfold?
Also, I should point out that the error doesn’t happen every time. Sometimes there is no script error at all, but the rest is the same (settings are lost, no layers, background disappears, name reverts back to Unnamed)