DNN Professor Blogs

I recently received an email asking why DotNetNuke sites, hosted at GoDaddy started slow.

There are several reasons why a DotNetNuke site could be running slow. Most of these reasons are ASP.NET related rather than DotNetNuke.

1. If your site is not visited with constant traffic, ASP.NET will reclaim the server resources by unloading your site from memory when the site is not being used, When your site is loaded up again, it will take an average of 10 to 20 seconds to load the site up again.
2. The ASP.NET application pool availability. Depending on the price of your hosting service, there may be many, many other sites that are sharing the application pool and the server resources. It becomes like a traffic jam on the interstate. You are constantly waiting in line for the next available allocation of resources. A shared hosted server gets very crowded.
3. DNN cache and module cache settings (DNN cache - located in Host settings) can have an enormous impact on page load. The cache settings affect non-form pages and will prevent unnecessary database access. Try different cache settings to see what works best for your site.
4. Page Optimization. If you load too many modules on you home page, it will take much longer for the database to load them. Don't put in modules and images just because you can.

What can you do about it?

• One obvious answer is to get more constant traffic to your site.  Constant traffic will keep your site in memory and avoid the slow reload. There are services that you can use  until your traffic numbers increase. One, that  I have used for many years is http://host-tracker.com. With these pinging services, you can set a time interval that you want host-tracker to ping your site (In effect acting as a virtual visitor visiting your site once every so many minutes). The purpose being to tricking ASP.NET into not unloading your site from memory. The downside to this method is that if you are using Google Analytics or another form of visitor tracking, this constant pinging of your site will give you an inaccurate count of true visitations to your site.
• Optimize your pages - Try to avoid multiple modules that consume database resources on you index or home page. RSS feeds on a home page, as an example, take a very long time to load. Optimize your use of modules, images and logos to reduce file size. The larger the file size, the longer the page takes to load.
• Optimize DNN cache - These settings can be found at Host >> Host Settings >> Performance Settings.
• Ask your hosting provider to switch you to an application pool with less site traffic. An overloaded application pool or one shared site, on the server, that is hogging resources can bring your site to a crawl.
• Consider switching host providers - I have recently recommended that all of our DotNetNuke clients consider switching to PowerDNN for their hosting needs. I do not have any monetary gain for recommending PowerDNN. But, I have switched all of our company sites to dedicated servers at PowerDNN and from the feedback of our clients that have made the switch, even the $20.00 per month hosting plans at PowerDNN load twice as fast  as their previous provider. PowerDNN also offers a free trial period.