Introduction
Forms Authentication in ASP.NET can be a powerful feature. With very little code and effort, you can have a simple authentication system that is platform-agnostic. If your needs are more complex, however, and require more efficient controls over assets, you need the flexibility of groups. Windows Authentication gives you this flexibility, but it is not compatible with anything but Internet Explorer since it uses NTLM, Microsoft's proprietary authentication system. Now you must choose how to manage your assets: provide multiple login pages / areas and force users to register for each, or assign groups to users and limit access to pages / areas to particular groups. Obviously, you must choose the latter.
