BCRose
Nuke Master
Posts:131
 |
| 02/03/2010 8:34 PM |
|
I find most DNN sites to be painfully slow. What is different about them from regular sites?
Seems like it takes forever to load pages but once loaded very quick. Are pages not cached the same in browsers?
I have a ping service hitting my site as suggested to keep it alive but it is still slow to load. At least much slower than a regular site. With the speed of todays Internet connections most sites are instant, this is like going back to dial up. |
|
|
|
|
pwil
Nuker
Posts:16
|
| 02/04/2010 9:12 AM |
|
There's been a lot written on this subject and I ran into the same problem - slow initial page loads and then reasonable performance after that. What I discovered was that my hoster was the problem. I suspect the reason was that I was running my DNN pages on a shared machine, and I was running the SQL Server database on a shared SQL Server. In that scenario, you can't guarantee any sort of performance, and many hosters will cram quite a few different sites onto one machine, making them all compete for resources.
I had started going down the pinger path and then discovered that some hosters are specialized in DNN and know how to avoid the performance problems entirely. For example, I switched to PowerDNN and haven't had any site lag or slow performance at all. I don't know all of the tricks that they're doing to achieve this, but it's really pretty slick.
I'm sure there are other dnn-specialized hosters as well, I think it's worth the time to look into it for a couple of weeks, do a test setup with one of them, and see if your performance problems go away. |
|
|
|
|
mgordon
Nuke Master
Posts:208
|
| 02/04/2010 9:22 AM |
|
Permit me to throw my 2 penny's into this. .aspx pages have to be "recycled" (would be the word I use), every 20 minutes of inactivity. This means that your website must be reloaded into the application pool in IIS every 20 minutes. Once this is done, you enjoy quick page loads. If your website is visited more ofthen than every 20 minutes, you will suffer no slow load-ups. A way to help this is to have a service that regularly pings your page. These used to be free, but with so many .aspx sites, it is not economically feasible to dedicate servers to pinging pages all over the interwebs (yes, I said interwebs...my teen sons have influenced me). I use a service provided by Mitchel Sellers and since then I have observed quicker page loads. You might want to check his service out. It's called "mywebkeepalive" and you can access it from his company's website at: http://www.iowacomputergurus.com/default.aspx His service provides statistics as well. Hope this helps. |
|
Mark Gordon
Webmonkey |
|
|
Joseph Craig
DNN MVP
Posts:11667
|
| 02/04/2010 11:00 PM |
|
Just to add to Mark's comments ...
If you can configure IIS, your site doesn't "have" to be restarted. The 20 minutes is the default configuration.
There is a new, free keep-alive service available from Mandeeps.com. They are trustworthy. There are other good commercial services. Mitchel Sellers is certainly one of the very reputable providers.
I purchased (for around $15) a programs that I run on a local computer that sends keep-alive pings to all of the sites that I need.
Besides the reload, make sure that you configure your sites for heavy caching, unless there is a good reason not to do that.
Then, there is the issue of page size. Yslow is a good utility to examine page sizes and other things that can slow down your site. Use it, and study where your sites fall short. Use standard techniques (search for them) to minimize the problems.
Often, you will have things on your pages that rely on other sites. They can slow you down quite a bit.
Large images, media files, etc. cause problems.
So do CSS files.
All can be mitigated. But, the key is to use available tools to analyze your site and then take appropriate action.
|
|
Joe Craig, Patapsco Research Group
Complete DNN Support |
|
|
Lee Sykes
DNN Creative Staff
Nuke Master VI
Posts:4945
|
|
BCRose
Nuke Master
Posts:131
|
| 02/05/2010 5:23 PM |
|
Posted By Joseph Craig on 04 Feb 2010 11:00 PM
Just to add to Mark's comments ...
If you can configure IIS, your site doesn't "have" to be restarted. The 20 minutes is the default configuration.
There is a new, free keep-alive service available from Mandeeps.com. They are trustworthy. There are other good commercial services. Mitchel Sellers is certainly one of the very reputable providers.
I purchased (for around $15) a programs that I run on a local computer that sends keep-alive pings to all of the sites that I need.
Besides the reload, make sure that you configure your sites for heavy caching, unless there is a good reason not to do that.
Then, there is the issue of page size. Yslow is a good utility to examine page sizes and other things that can slow down your site. Use it, and study where your sites fall short. Use standard techniques (search for them) to minimize the problems.
Often, you will have things on your pages that rely on other sites. They can slow you down quite a bit.
Large images, media files, etc. cause problems.
So do CSS files.
All can be mitigated. But, the key is to use available tools to analyze your site and then take appropriate action.
Would you mind sharing the name of the program you purchased that you run on your local computer?
|
|
|
|
|
BCRose
Nuke Master
Posts:131
|
| 02/05/2010 5:25 PM |
|
When a site is visited with one of these keep-alive utilities does the entire site get reloaded or just the home page? |
|
|
|
|
Joseph Craig
DNN MVP
Posts:11667
|
| 02/07/2010 7:05 PM |
|
That will depend on what the keep-alive actually does, but generally it will request a single page.
|
|
Joe Craig, Patapsco Research Group
Complete DNN Support |
|
|
BCRose
Nuke Master
Posts:131
|
| 02/07/2010 7:09 PM |
|
Posted By Joseph Craig on 07 Feb 2010 7:05 PM
That will depend on what the keep-alive actually does, but generally it will request a single page.
When it requests a single page does the entire site get reloaded? Or just that page?
|
|
|
|
|
Joseph Craig
DNN MVP
Posts:11667
|
| 02/07/2010 7:13 PM |
|
The site should not be reloaded by IIS. If the site has been unloaded, then it will be reloaded and that will cause some time delay. If the site is active, it won't be reloaded.
The trick to the keep-alive is to revisit the site with a frequency that keeps the site from being unloaded.
|
|
Joe Craig, Patapsco Research Group
Complete DNN Support |
|
|