web.config, administration.config, GAC, roles, and providers???

I am trying unsuccessfully to setup roles and providers for my website, and it seems the more I read, the more confused I become.

I want to use windows form authentication, and I want to authenticate against my SQL database.

I have used the aspnet_regsql tool, and it created the schema successfully inside of my database. I have verified this.

I have tried to add settings to my web.config file to establish a custom provider pointing to my database, and I get an error about needing to add this custom provider as a trusted provider.

In order to do that I need to edit the administration.config file, and store something in GAC, which I am assuming this would need to exist on discountasp's end and not locally on my developer machine, and that I would not have access to the administration.config and/or GAC.

Do I need to use a custom provider or can I use the AspNetSqlRoleProvider with a custom connection string point to my discountasp SQL server?

A SHOVE in the right direction with a definitive example would be nice!

Thanks!

 

Thanks Bruce, ultimately that shoved me in the right direction!

From that article the only thing I would add is that it didnt really specify WHERE in the web.config file you need to put the connection string.

Also I ended up having to add a membership node to the file, and a machinekey node.

This is what that portion of my web.config file looks like now:

Code:

    <appSettings/>
  <connectionStrings>
    <remove name="LocalSqlServer" />
    <add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=sqlservername;Integrated Security=false;Initial Catalog=databasename;User ID=username;Password=password" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </connectionStrings>
  
    <system.web>

      <machineKey validationKey="InsertYourOwnRandomlyGeneratedMachineKeyHere" validation="SHA1" decryption="AES" />
      
      <membership>
        <providers>
          <remove name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"/>
          <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web,    Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" enablePasswordRetrieval="true" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true" applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Encrypted" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="3" passwordAttemptWindow="10" passwordStrengthRegularExpression="" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"/>
        </providers>
      </membership>

I used this website to randomly generate my machine key.

http://aspnetresources.com/tools/machineKey

Hope this helps others!