Membership Provider property must be an instance of ExtendedMembershipProvider

Have you just created an ASP.NET MVC 4 internet project, decided to use the universal providers to utilize SQL Azure? So you have installed the NuGet package Microsoft ASP.NET Universal Providers and now your project bombs with:

To call this method, the “Membership.Provider” property must be an instance of “ExtendedMembershipProvider”.

You search for a solution, find Jon Galloway article SimpleMembership, Membership Providers, Universal Providers and the new ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC 4 templates , where he states: “If you want to use the new AccountController, you’ll either need to use the SimpleMembershipProvider or another valid ExtendedMembershipProvider. This is pretty straightforward.”

Well, he fails to describe what you’ll need to do if you want continue to use the AccountController. Fear not, here’s what you’ll have do to.

Edit your web.config and replace:

<profile defaultProvider=“DefaultProfileProvider“>
<providers>
  <add name=“DefaultProfileProvider“ type=“System.Web.Providers.DefaultProfileProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35“
connectionStringName=“DefaultConnection“
applicationName=“/“ />
  </providers>
</profile>
<membership defaultProvider=“DefaultMembershipProvider“>
  <providers>
    <add name=“DefaultMembershipProvider“
type=“System.Web.Providers.DefaultMembershipProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35“ connectionStringName=“DefaultConnection“ enablePasswordRetrieval=“false“ enablePasswordReset=“true“ requiresQuestionAndAnswer=“false“
requiresUniqueEmail=“false“ maxInvalidPasswordAttempts=“5“
minRequiredPasswordLength=“6“ minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters=“0“
passwordAttemptWindow=“10“
applicationName=“/“ />
  </providers>
</membership>
<roleManager defaultProvider=“DefaultRoleProvider“>
  <providers>
    <add name=“DefaultRoleProvider“ type=“System.Web.Providers.DefaultRoleProvider, System.Web.Providers, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35“ connectionStringName=“DefaultConnection“ applicationName=“/“ />
  </providers>
</roleManager>

With:

<profile defaultProvider=“SimpleProfileProvider“>
  <providers>
    <add name=“SimpleProfileProvider“ type=“WebMatrix.WebData.SimpleMembershipProvider, WebMatrix.WebData“
        connectionStringName=“DefaultConnection“ applicationName=“/“ />
</providers>
</profile>
<membership defaultProvider=“SimpleMembershipProvider“>
  <providers>
      <add name=“SimpleMembershipProvider“ type=“WebMatrix.WebData.SimpleMembershipProvider, WebMatrix.WebData“ />
  </providers>
</membership>
<roleManager defaultProvider=“SimpleRoleProvider“>
  <providers>
    <add name=“SimpleRoleProvider“ type=“WebMatrix.WebData.SimpleRoleProvider, WebMatrix.WebData“/>
  </providers>
</roleManager>