upgrades

Iam using an older version of opencart do i need to up grade not sure what version it is but its in the 1.4 era will it mess up my website if i do upgrade please let me know thanks

upgrading from 1.4.x to 1.5.x is a bit off work.
yes your site will be messed up as you will need to find a new tempalte suiteble for new version, also if you have extensions they will need to be upgraded as well.

before upgrading uninstall all extesnions you have for security.
first step is to upgrade to 1.5 and you need some extra utils wich can be found in the forum, to upgrade things like tags etc.

once that is running, go through each version update until you reach desired version.
if that is working fine, you can start to add new extesnions.

ii recomend to do a upgrade on a test shop to get familiar with the process involved and make sure it will work.

no need to say before doing anything backup files and database.
put store in maintenace mode when doing these kind off tricks to prevent changes in database

do i really need to upgrade and can i make my site mobile freindly with my version

if your shop is running fine, making great money no, if you dont want to mis out on the new media or losing money you should upgrade, as latest versions do work with mobile devices.

If upgrading scares you just drop a PM i can assist in helping you upgrade on a seperate server, so you life shop stays untouched until upgrade works as desired