Glad, you got it working. Not sure why I don't get that role cookie error on my machine but I will add handling for it similar to what you did.
Regarding the web store issue, it seems that in my db I have defaults for some columns that are not created in a new db, but really its on some columns I'm not using and I need to drop those columns from the tables. I will look into cleaning that up in the next day or 2. I'll let you know when its fixed and you can then do svn update to get the fix.
Regarding making it wider, that is not always easy because many of the skins use images and you would have to resize them. In any case to change the look you need to learn CSS and review the skinning documentation.
Best,
Joe