Forms Authentication in ASP.NET 2.0

Forms authentication is amazingly simple in ASP.NET 2.0. Not only does it manage user credentials and roles for you, it also provides controls for logging in, creating new users, e-mailing lost passwords, and more. It even maps requests to roles, something that required some non-trivial coding in ASP.NET 1.x.

Here’s a tip to make life easier with the new LoginStatus control. I set its LogoutPageUrl property to my home page so users would be redirected back to the home page after logging out. It didn’t work. At first I figured it was a bug in beta 1, but then I found the LogoutAction property. I set LogoutAction=“Redirect“ and lo and behold, clicking the Logout link sent me right back to the home page. Moral: LogoutPageUrl is only meaningful if LogoutAction=”Redirect.” Case closed!