While updating the layout of the DasBlog I needed to alter some of the source code to output lists rather than tables etc and after uploading the latest version of the blog the login form suddenly failed to work. When logging into DasBlog it would accept the parameters and either kick me out to the error page or redirect me to the logged in page.

DasBlog includes some fairly indepth error logging (not using Phil Winstanley’s Error Reporting code mind you), one of the events it logs is logging in. I noticed that I would get one of two errors when logging in, when I was shown the error page it would say: “Password Challenge was null in ViewState! <br>   at newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.LoginBox.doSignIn_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)” etc and when it took me to the front page it would log: “Audit: SecuritySuccess” and the standard who logged in from which IP etc.

As I’d edited the DasBlog source my immediate thought was that I’d changed something in the login process so I copied the original DLLs back onto the site and tried again without any success. After a fair amount of searching into the issue on Google and the DasBlog forums I was at a loss as to the issue so I asked on the DasBlog forum (http://www.dasblog.us/viewtopic.php?t=417).

A couple of people responded including Tom but sadly none of the suggestions applied to my situation. In the end I found that the issue was being caused because I was running the site under ASP.Net 2.0. When running DasBlog under ASP.Net 2.0 you need to make additional changes to the web.config file as outlined in the install documentation. When setting up the staging site I copied the directory from my main blog so I had the same content to test with, although I remembered to alter all the relevant areas in the site.config etc files, I had neglected to alter the cookie path setting in the web.config. So if you’re getting the same issues, check the web.config cookie path values.