ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("IsDebugMode") is returning null

Question

Background: I'm developing a website in ASP.NET with VB.NET backend, .net framework is 4.0. It's actually a redesign of an existing site, and everything works on the old version, and in fact the settings are the same there...

So I've got a master page for the admin section of my website which requires RSA authentication, however I want to skip that part of it obviously when I just hit f5 and run in debug on my local machine. So at the beginning of the page load event I do a check for...

If NOT ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("IsDebugMode") then
here's my code for authentication...
else
return true 'user automatically authenticated
end if

however, when I hit f5, it keeps throwing the error "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." I've googled it, and it looks like this syntax is correct, and like I said, the code is copy/pasted from the existing site, which functions the same in this area, and works just fine.

Is there a setting somewhere that I need to "turn on" this feature? I've never used the configuration manager before, so I'm not sure if it is requiring more than I've built so far. Anyone familiar with this?

Answer 1

Find and open web.config file, it's usually in the root directory of your web application, locate the appSettings section, add in an entry like:

    <add key="IsDebugMode" value="true" />