How much time you have to wait when clicking on your DNN site first time?
For some reason I noticing 10-20 seconds initial delay in explorer until front page of my site starts appearing. Is this a problem with my hosting provider or this is what DNN+ASP functionality requires to make initial spin-up? My test sites are:

DNN 3.2.2 : http://dnn3.c.gg
DNN 4.02 : http://dnn4.c.gg

Both of them giving me 10-20 seconds initial delay.

Gleb

It depends on your hosting provider.  If you're using one of those $5-$10/mo hosting providers, then yes, DNN will run really sluggish especially with the initial delay - that why I really like PowerDNN.  However, today there was actually a service just released that will keep your sites alive (for free) which should eliminate the initial load time.  The site is www.KeepAliveForever.com

I agree with you on these points, initial on-access startup of heavy ASP and overshared "shared" hosting plans. The one would never know how many shared hosting plans are running from the same machine and apparently the less you pay - probably the more "sharing" you are with lord knows how many people. Even PowerDNN's $100/mo plan is still "shared" I beleive.
For the same money the one could lease dedicated server at GoDaddy and be in full control of everything via remote desktop. I think this is a way to go especially for people who expect to market "portals" off single DNN installation.

Gleb

There are several candidates for this problem. From a cursory inspection of your site i can suggest a couple of things to lookinto.

1. Caching - DNN caching settings (in host settings) can have an enormous impact on pageload.
                        Try them out to see what works, bear in mind this will only affect Non form pages and essentially will prevent unnecessary database access.

2. Sql server optimization - default sql setup is far from optimal for DNN and does a whole load of stuff you just don't need, like roll back transaction log support. There are great many issues here but some heavy optimization will have a massive effect on speed for servers with load. This can emerge as a problem as soon as traffic starts rising and WILL cause embarrassing 'application unavailable' errors under load. Optimize early on.

3. Keep Alives - This is an ASP.net issue but essentially the app is unloaded from memory when not being used, so your 10-20 delay is the app firing up for the first time. There are tools you can buy to sort this out, but also learn about the ASP.net availability issues.

4. ASP.net application pool availability and the default machine.config settings will affect performance/availability issues.

Hope this helps, there are more things that can be done, but i would have to charge consulting fees for any more advice ;). Besides if you look into all of this then your sites will be faster than 90% of DNN deployments out there.

Happy Hunting

Matt Gahan

 

You are correct about PowerDNN's business plan.  The primary reason that PowerDNN is more expensive is that their underlying hardware is so much superior and they load a lot less clients per box.

You're right though, $100/mo for a dedicated server is cheap, but if you think about it - an ultra-low-end server (just hardware and software - not hosting) would cost a minimum of $1,200 which means they'd have to operate each server for at least a year (at a loss).  To turn a profit on that, they'd really have to cut quality somewhere.

I think that PowerDNN is maybe serving more of a nich market - not the dirt-cheap "everybody" but a more specialized group who need speed and reliability.

I might be leaking a little more information than I should, but I do know there is a company that's in the process of utilizing PowerDNN's infrastructure to provide a free DNN hosting service for people who want the low-end.  Pretty cool if you ask me.

This solution works well for me, and it is FREE!

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/ForumsDotNetNuke/tabid/795/forumid/108/threadid/13894/threadpage/2/scope/posts/Default.aspx

John B

Thanks everyone for your advice. I was just a bit cautious seeing all these sluggish performances, and hopefully following basic optimization steps things will be improved. I do agree though that majority of DNN portals are not optimized at all and "feels" very heavy to respond after each click.

 

Gleb

FYI - KeepAliveForever.com will now email you when your site goes down and stuff.