As I mentioned before you should not run a live site in debug mode. Just last week I stumbled across the username and password of the Aspie Affection db.
I don't know why Alex doesn't use a test server to do work on the site with. It is generally considered poor form to leave a site in this condition. stuff like having word like 'test' in random places.
phpBB, vbulitin, etc you expect them to work reasonably well. If anything the site has deteriorated since work has been done and is on going. You shouldn't have work in progress in terms of functionality on a live site. it just confuses people and can leave you open to exploits.