I modified the file according to the example. I am now able to delete the plugin in question with no issues and the site looks to be stable so far.
Thank you for your reply.
I checked and no reference to base64 anywhere. The only other difference I found from the example you provided is:
//define( ‘WP_CACHE’, true );
require_once( dirname( __FILE__ ) . ‘/gd-config.php’ );
define( ‘FS_METHOD’, ‘direct’);
define(‘FS_CHMOD_DIR’, (0705 & ~ umask()));
define(‘FS_CHMOD_FILE’, (0604 & ~ umask()));
