I am working on integrating DNN4.7 with LDAP for the intranet in the company I work for.  After following a few threads and looking into the code  I end up  on the AspNetMembershipProvider class.  For my purpose all I need to do is replace the functionality of ValidateUser( )  and ChangePassword( ).  ChangePassword( ) is overridable but ValidateUser() is not.  I addressed my problem by modifying the source code for AspNetMerbershipProvider and making ValidateUser protected and overridable.

Since AspNetMemrbershipProvider can serve as the base class for most efforts requiring external authentication, would it be possible in future versions of DNN to make private methods protected and overridables?

The articles I found on this subject promote clipboard inheritance of AspNetMembershipProvider (copy and paste for the object oriented challenged) as opposed to true inheritance.  A great deal of functionality is packed in this class that I do not want to replicate to be able to authenticate users externally.  Also there is the issue of keeping up with updates.  My approach will required modifications to the 4.8 source code when I am ready to upgrade, but that would not be necessary if the ASPNetMembershipProvider class was refactored to allow  selective modification.