I built a simple photo album ASP.NET applicatioin with Visual Studio 2005 and I decided to use forms-based authentication to "password-protect" the application.  The good news is that I didn't write a single line of code to provide a login page.  However, there was a bit of configuration and installation that I had to do to get the SQL Server 2005 personalization database setup and working with my application.  Once I got it setup, deploying it to my production server was a breeze ...

Here are the important steps:

1.  Run the aspnet_regsql.exe application from the Visual Studio 2005 command prompt to create the aspnetdb database,

2.  Be sure to grant your anonymous Internet login aspnet_Membership_BasicAccess, aspnet_Personalization_BasicAccess, aspnet_Profile_BasicAccess, and aspnet_Roles_BacisAccess role memberships for the aspnetdb database,

3.  Using Visual Studio 2005, configure your web.config file with a connection string to the aspnet database, as well as membership, roleManager, and authorization nodes as shown below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!--
Note: As an alternative to hand editing this file you can use the
web admin tool to configure settings for your application. Use
the Website->Asp.Net Configuration option in Visual Studio.
A full list of settings and comments can be found in
machine.config.comments usually located in
\Windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.x\Config
-->
<configuration xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">
    <appSettings/>
    <connectionStrings>
        <add
name="MySqlConnection"
connectionString="Data Source=<your SQL Server here>;Initial Catalog=aspnetdb;Integrated Security=SSPI;" />
    
    <system.web>
        <!--
Set compilation debug="true" to insert debugging
symbols into the compiled page. Because this
affects performance, set this value to true only
during development.
-->
        <compilation debug="true"/>

        <authorization>
<allow users="guest" />
<deny users="*" />
</authorization>
        <!--
The <authentication> section enables configuration
of the security authentication mode used by
ASP.NET to identify an incoming user.
-->
        <membership defaultProvider="SqlProvider" userIsOnlineTimeWindow="15">
            <providers>
                <clear />
                <add
name="SqlProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider"
connectionStringName="MySqlConnection"
applicationName="<your app name here>"
enablePasswordRetrieval="false"
enablePasswordReset="true"
requiresQuestionAndAnswer="true"
requiresUniqueEmail="true"
passwordFormat="Hashed" />
            </providers>
        </membership>
        
        <roleManager>
            <providers>
                <clear />
                <add
connectionStringName="MySqlConnection"
applicationName="<your app name here>"
name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
                <add
applicationName="PatsPhotos"
name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider"
type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
            </providers>
        </roleManager>

        <authentication mode="Forms">
            <forms name=".ASPXFORMSAUTH" />
        </authentication>

        <!--
The <customErrors> section enables configuration
of what to do if/when an unhandled error occurs
during the execution of a request. Specifically,
it enables developers to configure html error pages
to be displayed in place of a error stack trace.

<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="GenericErrorPage.htm">
<error statusCode="403" redirect="NoAccess.htm" />
<error statusCode="404" redirect="FileNotFound.htm" />
</customErrors>
-->
    </system.web>
</configuration>

4.  From the Website, ASP.NET Configuration menu in Visual Studio 2005, add the appropriate users, roles, and access rules using the Website Administration Tool,

5.  For my app, I created a new, blank ASP.NET page named login.aspx and dragged a Login control onto the page from the Toolbox.  I selected one of the built-in auto formats for the Login control ...

Et voila!  I had added forms-based authentication using a SQL Server 2005 database without writing a single line of ASP.NET code!

After testing my application, I repeated steps 1 and 2 on my production SQL Server, and modified my web.config file to add a "production" connection string ...