Hi All,

I was looking at DNN hosting for a site that is ready to go live.  This is my first DNN site and is almost completely built out on my localhost, so I am pretty much ready to go.

However, during my search for hosting, I came across a keep alive product that is only included in some packages.  Can someone explain to me what this is for, if its necessary and what the downside would be if we don't have it as part of our hosting.

Thanks in advance!

John

By default, ASP "unloads" web sites that are inactive for a period of time. The default setting is 20 minutes.

So, if your site is inactive, it will be unloaded. The next request will result in the site reloading, and that can take time. Keep alive services will send requests to your site on a schedule designed to keep this from happening. Normally, a request every 5 or 10 minutes is fine.

You will also find some free and some for-pay services on the net that will do this for you. Last year I purchased a program called "Keeper Up" (I think I found it on SnowCovered) and use it. It runs as a service on your compter, and will optionally email you when a site doesn't respond. It can handle many sites, and each one can have a customized schedule.

I just set everything for 5 minutes, and I turned off the email notification. I hardly remember it's there, but it does it's job!

Thanks Joe,

I figured this was what it is for.  It helps to know I have other options besides what is offered from the hosting provider.

Does increasing the time value that the page object is kept in the cache help? It is set by default to 20 minutes.

Hello,

No it doesn't, this is a setting set up on your server. The server will unload your website from its memory if it doesn't have a visitor within approx 20mins (it varies depending on what your hosting provider configures).

That's why if your site doesn't have a lot of traffic at the moment we recommend to use a ping service so that the site is regulalry pinged and forces the site to remain in the servers memory - this means your site will not have to wait for 17secs to load on first visit while the server loads the site into its memory.

I also added some ping services here:
Performance Tips - Fast Site - Keep Alive Tools - Hosting