After a very frustrating day, I finally fixed the e-commerce system. So if you've been waiting to make a purchase (I know a couple of you have), you can finally do it.
There were some important lessons learned from this:

• Make regular backups, and validate those backups.
• Having the source is very important

Before I upgraded the e-commerce system, I took a backup of the database and the code. Normal paranoid behavior. What I forgot to do was verify that I had the proper database backed up. I had a perfect backup of the database for another site, not this one.

When I did the update, I grabbed a new alpha (which, BTW, looks really nice) and it made a lot of changes to the database. When the alpha didn't work and I backed it out, I missed some of the changes to the database.

This is where having the source code comes in. Because I could read through the source, I was able to find a crucial block of code that wasn't being executed. That in turn pointed me to the right place to look in the database. And once I found that, it was a quick SQL fix to get the e-commerce system back up and running. In fact, that's why I include the source of the registration DLL in the commercial package, because some day you might find yourself in the same problem I was in.

Now, as to when we'll be getting the new system, I hope the answer is RSN. It looks really nice, and I'll be testing the alpha so that I'll understand the issues when it comes out. Hopefully I can also contribute some code changes to make that rollout a little smoother for the next guy.