What i want to do is redesign the entire login, registration and profile updating pages (Credentials, Password, Profile, Services). And im not just talking a few css tweaks i mean completely revamp every aspect. Unfortunately, it doesnt seem easy. I realise there are a few 3rd party modules which you can customize but id rather not buy one if i dont have to. It seems like something that should be skinnable but apparently not?
Beware People should be careful of adding the built in "User Account" module to their pages, it takes over and redirects you to the default account module. Its very unforgiving. I have a test playground page on my portal where i added this control to see what it was about, and the only way i could recover this page was to force an error in the account source code (\admin\Users\manageusers.ascx) so it wouldnt get a chance to redirect and then remove the module from my page.
So anyway, i can see its posisble to edit the ascx files under the admin folder, however that seems to me as an out of bounds area thats going to be overridden with a core upgrade and therefore changing styles there isnt a good idea.
I have had limited success in copying selected files from ~/admin/users/ and putting them under DesktopModules and adding a new module definition. This has allowed me to add the user profile pages as a standard module and customize the styles for these pages without impacting the core controls....
... but it feels like a dirty hack. Is there a better way?