Changing the default login page for use with LoginStatus control

Sometimes it is desirable to have a different default login page. For example, a simple site where administrators login at http://foo.com/admin/Login.aspx versus the standard http:foo.com/Login.aspx. The LoginStatus control will hyperlink back to the default login page. To change this default login page, change the web.config file as follows:

    <authentication mode="Forms" >
      <forms loginUrl="~/admin/Login.aspx"></forms>
    </authentication>

Reference: http://erlend.oftedal.no/blog/?blogid=55

Configure SQL Database for User Login

If you try and set up User Login without configuring the web.config file and try to login from a hosted site you might get an error similar to :" An attempt to attach an auto-named database for file C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\WebSites\WebSite1\App_Data\aspnetdb.mdf failed. A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share. "
To configure it for User Login, I first added the user database to the SQL server using this method.

Next, I changed the web.config file to include:

  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="ConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=my.host.net;Database=myDatabase;uid=myUserId;pwd=myPassword" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
  </connectionStrings>
    <system.web>
        <authentication mode="Forms" />
    
    <membership defaultProvider="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider">
      <providers>
        <clear/>
        <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" connectionStringName="LocalSqlServersm" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Hashed" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" minRequiredPasswordLength="3" applicationName="/" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="3"/>
      </providers>
    </membership>
    
  <roleManager enabled="true" />

Just change the myX fields to your fields. And now your configuration manager should work to add users and roles.

Using Web.config hash for variables using add, key, and value

Use configuration (web.config) hash to set variables. First, there is the web.config file section: ...

<configuration>
   <appSettings>
      <add key="fooLink" value="http://www.foo.htm"/> 
   </appSettings>
</configuration>

Now in the code-behind I can set a Hyperlink variable as follows:

HyperLinkFoo.NavigateUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["fooLink"].ToString().ToLower();