Debugging authentication in web apps is painful. You need to test the same flow as five different user types — new visitor, returning user, admin, expired session, logged-out — and the easiest way is to constantly create new accounts or clear all your cookies and start over. There's a faster way. These five techniques use direct cookie manipulation to simulate any auth state without touching your database or creating dummy accounts. I use CookieJar for most of this — a free Chrome extens...