Securing an ASP.NET MVC application for beta testing?

Question

Hey all. I have an ASP.NET MVC application that I am going to be deploying to a live server soon. Theoretically, I would like to password protect the application while I'm beta testing without modifying the underlying code base or membership within the application. I will have several people beta testing, so it is compulsory that it is available on the web. A simple scenario:

1. User navigates to the application under beta
2. Perhaps an HttpHandler will process the request and redirect them to an interstitial, temporary login page where they have to enter a beta password to access the application

Stackoverflow used a similar technique when they were under beta test. Any ideas?

An edit for clarification. I don't have access to IIS for this particular application because I'm using a managed host.

Answer 1

A couple ideas:

1. Use windows authentication for the whole application/site in IIS
2. The idea you mentioned is also a good approach IMO, implementation would probably be flexible in that case.