title: Forms Authentication equivalent for the Membership API
body: <p>My website's administration portal is only accessed by a single user, and it is for this reason that I  chose to use basic forms authentication - </p>
  
  <pre><code>public bool Authenticate(string username, string password)
  {
      var authenticated = FormsAuthentication.Authenticate(username, password);
      if (authenticated)
          FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(username, false);
      return authenticated;
  }
  ...
  &lt;authentication mode="Forms"&gt;
    &lt;forms loginUrl="~/login" timeout="2880"&gt;
      &lt;credentials passwordFormat="SHA1"&gt;
        &lt;user name="admin" password="ABC.." /&gt;
      &lt;/credentials&gt;
    &lt;/forms&gt;
  &lt;/authentication&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Recently I learned that the <code>FormsAuthentication.Authenticate</code> method has been deprecated and that I should use the membership API instead.</p>
  
  <p>What is the membership API equivalent for <code>FormsAuthentication.Authenticate</code> that will allow me to store credentials the in web.config? </p>