DotNetNuke Windows Authentication and SuperUser permissions

I’ve tried to work with DotNetNuke Windows Authentication to extend it to work in mixed mode ( Use Windows Integrated Authentication for seamless logon intranet logon and use Forms authentication for users unable to use Windows Integrated authentication), as I did it before for my ASP.NET application .

I found that since I activated Windows Authentication, I can logon only as my domain account user,which does not have DNN portal host or admin roles. So I unable using DNN web interface to administrate DNN.

I had to open Users table in SQL server and changed my domain user record to be SuperUser. After this I was able to see host/admin menu, but my user-name wasn’t shown.

After debugging the problem I recognized that setting 1 to SuperUser column of dnn Users table is not the only change that is required.

Microsoft Membership required to store user per application and SuperUser is stored for application “dnn-1”, which means “for all dnn application” (see discussions here and here). So just changing superUser flag is not enough and make DNN users and aspnet membership entries inconsistent.

I think that way as superUser membership is stored should be re-considered to find a better design solution(no good suggestion at the moment)

The conclusion are:

1.Before switching to Windows Authentication ensure that your LAN acoount has host/administrative permissions for the portal.

2.Use Portal UI to make a user SuperUser, don’t update SQL table directly.