Just a heads up to people who might run across the same problem I ran into tonight regarding the Membership and Roles Manager built into Visual Studio/Web Developer. I was getting an error when I tried to launch the "Administrate Website," after I connected to my asp.net site via ftp. As it turns out, the administrative tool is not supported across file transfer protocol... and while this may seem apparent now, at the time I was scratching my head wondering what I'd managed to screw up.
The problem was a scary one because as far as I know (other than frontpage ext.) FTP is the only way to access my hosting plan... I HAVE to be able to administer roles and profiles... the two just didn't want to work together.
So, if you run into this problem yourself I invite you to read Peter Kellner's articles on membership role management with ISS:
http://peterkellner.net/2006/01/08/microsoft-aspnet-20-memberrole-management-with-iis-part-1-security-and-configuration-overview/
http://peterkellner.net/2006/01/09/microsoft-aspnet-20-memberrole-management-with-iis/
I guess what it all boils down to, is this great front end for managing your users and roles from an aspx page, it can be downloaded here in VB:
http://peterkellner.net/2007/02/15/membershipodsvb/
and
http://www.mindup.no/MembershipEditor.zip
All you need to do is copy the three vb code pages into your project's App_Code Directory and the Admin.aspx to a secure directory and you're good to go. The Admin page provides the same functionality as the visual studio admin tool for editing and managing users and roles. The solution is also available in C#, you'll just have to do some digging on Kellner's site for it.
Hope this helps someone!
By the way, I found these articles via Scott Gu here:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/07/18/Remote-Membership_2F00_Roles-Management-of-ASP.NET-2.0-Applications.aspx