One of the best practices that I (at Engage) have been training people is "don't let the browsers do more work!"

Adding more CSS files for the browsers to load and process will slow the site's performance. Especially portal.css has all the empty selectors that aren't doing anything but the browsers will load them and try to process and match all the styling.

Put all of your CSS into the skin.css to make less HTTP requests.

As of styling the login control- there are a few ways of doing but you just need to evaluate which is the best solution.

I styled the login control for our e-lreaning campaign here. Visit Engage University and click on Sign-in or simply just take our free course :-)

Cuong Dang
Co-founder: Enliven, dnnGallery
LinkedIn | Twitter
I'm the author of DNN and Web Standards Wrox Blox

George, thanks. Engage University uses the core login control. All you see is what I designed and styled differently.

I also removed/hid the "remember me" since it doesn't often work. Just don't want to promise users that the site can remember your log-in but then it doesn't.

Cuong Dang
Co-founder: Enliven, dnnGallery
LinkedIn | Twitter
I'm the author of DNN and Web Standards Wrox Blox