I've gotten around a site being down due to the initializer error.  I commented the line out of the web.config, brought the site up, and then removed those comments.  It's not a permenent fix, but it brings the site back online.  I've also discussed this with ASPDNSF, and I definitely feel that they are making strides on this. 

I've been keeping an eye on this thread and enjoy the thought that we're forming an ML/DNN support group (how many more of us are out there...) lol.

Yep, the ASPDNSF tech support promise of an "answer every day" to support tickets is sometimes bastardized with really obvious answers or replies to a misunderstood question, but hey, it's a reply! But I think they do what any of us might - farm out the initial responses to the support bullpen and only escalate the ticket to a more knowledgeable person if the situation warrants it. They most obviously farm out quite a bit overseas, and I have wondered whether they do so as much for the ML/32-ML/64 code and support.

It's been a LONG 2 years. A long time to wait for the initial release, a long time to wait for a stable commerce platform, a long time to suffer through some of the annoyances or ommissions with each of the releases. It wasn't too long ago that some things were broken because of bad queries that were comingled in the code. Stuff that was hard to miss and easy to trip over. It made me wonder if they were just overwhelmed or shortstaffed. I'd much prefer that as the reason versus treating ML/DNN as an orphan.

Dwayne is on the mark with his use of the word hodgepodge, but it is getting so much better. Remember the rush of adrenalin when doing a module install (or uninstall) in the DNN v2 days?

I have come to hate seeing cctor(). But I haven't seen them for a while, or at least where I'm finally surprised when I do.

A few things that have come in real handy when trying to figure out how to fix, enable, customize or enhance the ASPDNSF feature set has been to just go to the ML/32 (read non-DNN) knowledge base and forums. Many of the underlying concepts are sort of the same, and it isn't that much of a stretch to translate the concepts over for use in ML/DNN.

Another very useful tool has been to have a clean install of every ASPDNSF version available to do either code comparisons or database comparisons against.

And I pity the shop that tries to do any of it without the source code. On the one hand, I'm amazed at how much we can accomplish and customize without touching (or needing) the source. It's really a joy to use this way. But on the other hand, it's real comforting to have the source so that we can fix what we need to fix and keep everyone (mostly) smiling on our own timetable instead of waiting for the next release point to hopefully provide the fix. The investment has been fairly heavy though - there are quite a few things that we fixed, only to see them fixed for good in the next release.

Multi-portal support? They talk about it being a feature of v7.1.2.0, but I really could care less and wish the development efforts were focused elsewhere. Maybe multi-portal is good for a mall or something, but I really don't want to mix the stores together. On Catalook? Sure, it's a different audience and price point, but on ASPDNSF? I'd be angry if I was a client that had a vendor or host mixing me up with other sites and customer data.

If you want to know where they are trying to get with ML/DNN, just look at the ML/32 feature set. It's usually a 4 month lag for features to trickle down to ML/DNN, although some things have actually been removed for some reason. But the talk in December was a major release in January (that really became a stabilization release with mutliportal support). Too bad, because there were things on the docket like phone order entry and translation of more of the v8 feature set. Upgrade links on ML/DNN even had v8 upgrade links in place that unfortunately didn't lead anywhere.

My take right now on ML/DNN is that

•  v7.1.2.0 is finally a stable base to work from, although it's still got some shortcomings and bugs. Unfortunately, it's still a matter of lowering the expectations when making the purchase, but at least what's delivered (mostly) runs as expected.
• I don't feel very good about the upgrading and licensing that I paid for since v7.0.0.1. If ASPDNSF was looking for goodwill, I think that they should reset the clock to the v7.1.2.0 release point. In their defense, they did a 6 month extension at some point, but that has since come and gone.
• I don't think they're going to sell a whole lot of ML/DNN's unless they either drop the price or accelerate the development to have both feature and stability parity with ML/32 v8.
• About 5 years ago, we abandoned Mambo (now Joomla) because of a lack of industrial quality eCommerce engines. I continue to have much hope that ASPDNSF will get this right, not only for them, but for DNN as well. I strongly believe that DNN as a platform needs ASPDNSF to succeed in a big way. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the Corp. were to share some of the seed money with ASPDNSF if that's what it takes for that to happen.

And if you're around Boston, come join us for the first meetup of the DNN Boston (North) UG. It's coming up on Tuesday evening, and ASPDNSF is one of the bullet points on the agenda.

Wow, reading this thread makes me realise how much we rely on software to assist us in doing business, and if we're not developers, or unable to justify the cost of the source code, or simply rely on those who sell the product, we're really between a rock and a hard place when it comes to delivering solutions for our clients.

It pains me to see that some of you guys have had an incredible amount of time without being able to push sites live.  Having lived in that space before and vowing never to let software do that to my business again, wouldn't it be more viable to create a standalone store using ASPDNSF and flip between the product and dnn and use the connectors that allow you to integrate users back into the dnn solution - I am pretty sure there are modules around that allow this. it might mean using a subdomain such as store.domain... and domain and while it's not perfect, it would at the very least give you movement forward.

It concerns me that people believe on face value that ASPDNSF is the premier product because that's how dnn markets it - and yet reading this - after nearly 2 years, I've not seen much inroads and impact on this product.

I don't know why many of you haven't looked at catalook - I don't write the code, have any business relationship with the developer but I thought it was such a good product for the money, the support and the flexibility if you learnt how to work it and have seen some pretty amazing sites that I personally thought wouldn't be possible in catalook and as a business decision - to offer clients a solution - even if it's not the best one, surely for $100 or so investment it would help in moving things forward until ASPDNSF actually met the expectations.

I setup a support site - http://www.catalooksupport.com - for the reason that it's not a native english product, and sometimes things are lost in translation, but it does work, it's rock solid.. I've had people on DNN 3.0.13 and catalook that I've been able to successfully upgrade to DNN 4.8.4 (haven't moved to 4.9.2 > 5 in upgrades yet but catalook store has been upgraded)  It upgrades, it works, and these sites are from 2005 and still the customer is happy.  As for difficulty of management - like anything it needs to be learnt but the clients love it and some are doing many many, thousands of dollars of transactions each month.

It does require some knowledge to make it look good - it's interface isn't as pretty as some but it's improving and the developer listens to what people ask for and support is amazing. What it does do - is let my customers get on with their business of selling online and it gives me the ability to deliver something, not always perfect, but based on this thread it's simply light years ahead of ASPDNSF because I'm reading that you guys - all experienced in DNN, you've been around for a while - you know how to work the code - but still can't deliver a really good solution because you're stuck. 

I am not in a position to offer free help - I wish I was, but catalook support forum is something I setup a few years ago, and there are around 1,000 members, many of who contribute only once, or many times and although it's a commercial product, it's at least a point where you can find some answers. It's great to see that others when they find answers to things, bother to reply back to help becuase they also appreciated the fact that someone helped them.

Maybe ASPDNSF is the best product in the world outside DNN but this thread alone has convinced me that I was right in not jumping ship to another shiny website that has amazing stores - on the hope that I could get my DNN install to be the same because it's obviously not working as it should at the moment.

I've installed catalooksupport on http://www.dnnbeta.com - it's 5.0 release - and the version of catalook is the one launched a couple of weeks ago with some further enhancements.  We have been working on some skinning elements and hope to have some nice demo stores online soon.

It might be worth having this product under your belt as well, as an option to get things moving.

I'm really sorry to hear you guys having so many problems - I hope that they are resolved soon so we can see more ecommerce solutions for DNN live and active as I feel that it's important.

Good luck guys - I'll be watching this thread to see how all pans out..

Nina Meiers