ASP.NET Membership staying authenticated issues

Question

So, my application is being odd in the fact that when you login you will stay logged in for a page or two then get lost. My settings are this:

 <authentication mode="Forms">    
     <forms name=".ASPXFORMSAUTH"  timeout="20"/>
  </authentication>

 <authorization>
<allow users="*" />
</authorization>
 <membership defaultProvider="MySqlConnection" userIsOnlineTimeWindow="45">
 <providers>
    <clear />
    <add name="MySqlConnection" type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider" connectionStringName="MySqlConnection" 
applicationName="HQChannel" 
enablePasswordRetrieval="true" 
enablePasswordReset="true"
requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" 
requiresUniqueEmail="true" 
passwordFormat="Hashed" 
minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" 
minRequiredPasswordLength="6" />
 </providers>
 </membership>

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

2 things stand out for me here. First is that you're allowing * users instead of ? users. * means anonymous, ? means authenticated. I'd change it to the following & see if that helps...

<authorization>
   <allow users="?" />
   <deny users="*" />
</authorization>

2nd thought would be that you'd want to add slidingExpiration="true" to your authentication block. That'll make the login into a sliding window - so they only get logged out after 20 minutes of inactivity...

<forms name=".ASPXFORMSAUTH" timeout="20" slidingExpiration="true" />

Answer 2

I would also check the code and see if the forms authentication ticket is being overridden with a different timeout as in the sample below.

FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket
(
   1, // version
   txtEmail.Text, // name
   DateTime.Now, // issueDate
   DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(30), // expiration
   false, // isPersistent
   roles, // userData
   FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath // cookiePath
 );

If the settings are explicitly overwritten from code then the web.config settings won't work as expected.