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Member

michael-thefamousgroup.com - 9/23/2010 1:38:08 AM

Kentico Websites Slow to Load

Hi

I've been trying to find a solution to this but to no avail. Why do the Kentico sites take so long to initially load? I've been told by others on the forums it's probably due to the code initially compiling but how can we fix this?

Waiting up to 20 seconds for the first page to load is unacceptable. Once the first page is loaded the site runs with no problem.

We set up a test using the Portal engine Corporate Site pre-built website and it has the same problem, so we don't think it's anything we've coded (not that the sites that are slow have any custom coding).

Are there minimum server/host requirements in terms of RAM/space etc to run the sites at maximum performance?

This is a major issue for us.

Thanks
Michael

Member

michael-thefamousgroup.com - 9/23/2010 3:55:20 AM

RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load

Ok, so some more info on this. We have just set up a test site:

http://famousgroupdev.com.au.mytempweb.com

This is the default site, created using the site wizard in the CMS with no modifications.

It is hosted on one of Kentico's recommended hosting partners (applied innovations).

The server closes down the app every 29 minutes.

The first time you load the site within that time frame it takes 15 - 25 seconds to load.

How do we improve this performance?

Thanks
Michael

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 9/23/2010 4:38:42 AM

RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load

Hi,

Are there any exceptions logged in Site Manager -> Administration -> Event log?

It seems that the hosting settings are set for some idle time - if no request is made by the application, after some time the application is shut down. Then, the first start of the application takes longer time - it is like you re-start the computer. Is there any traffic on the site during that 29 minutes?

Best Regards,
Juraj Ondrus


Member	michael-thefamousgroup.com - 9/28/2010 6:23:58 AM RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load Hi Do you have any further info on this. I sent you the details as requested last week and yet to hear anything back. Thanks Michael


Kentico Support	kentico_jurajo - 9/28/2010 11:01:05 AM RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load Hi, I sent a message on 9/23/2010. Could you please check the spam box/junk mail? Sometime it happens that our messages are marked as a spam. I will re-send it in a minute to you again. Please check your inbox. Best regards, Juraj Ondrus


Member	Frank-BW - 10/11/2010 2:39:30 PM RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load Just curious. Did you resolve this? If so, please share

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 10/12/2010 10:07:02 AM

RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load

Hi,

What I have suggested was to take a look on the articles listed below:

devnet.kentico.com/docs/devguide/sql_queries_debugging.htm
devnet.kentico.com/docs/devguide/threads_debugging.htm

devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/January-2010/Debugging-options-in-Kentico-CMS-5-0.aspx
devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/August-2008/Performance-of-Kentico-CMS.aspx
devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/October-2009/Webinar-2---Performance-optimization-and-caching-i.aspx
devnet.kentico.com/docs/devguide/caching_options.htm
devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/April-2009/Deep-Dive---Kentico-CMS-Caching.aspx
devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/January-2010/Optimization-tip--Write-better-code,-disable-Outpu.aspx
devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/December-2009/Optimization-tip--Speed-up-your-images-and-files.aspx
devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/December-2009/Tip--Is-your-menu-and-controls-cache-settings-effi.aspx

www.kevinleary.net/testing-page-load-speed-with-firebug

And also to check the Site Manager -> Administration -> Event log.

Also, I think that there was also issue with allocated application pool memory, which was only 175MB - which is enough for smaller sites, but not for sites with higher traffic or bigger content.

Best regards,
Juraj Ondrus

Member

michael-thefamousgroup.com - 10/12/2010 9:43:13 PM

RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load

Hi

Ok, yes we've been looking at this for a very long time as it has been an issue with all the Kentico sites we have made using the Portal Engine.

I will try and explain what we have tried and discovered below and our attempted fixes and fails.

It should be made clear that the issue solely lies with the initial load of the site (or application). Once the site is loaded the performance is great, very quick and no complaints.

We are told this load time is because the site has to initially compile the code before it can laod. And as the hosting server is set to kill (close) the application down after a certain amount of idle time (when no one is on your site) when a user visits the site, the site has to recompile all the code again before it can load. This is the delay and the reason why they are slow to load.

So we initially tried asking the hosting company not to have an idle-time out on the server. This couldn't be done but could be increased from 5 minutes to 20 minutes. So we did that anyway as we thought it would help a little. It didn't make any noticeable difference as our visitors were not that frequent to the site.

Support then told us that it might be an issue with the allocated pool memory (RAM) and the amount required to compile the code. We had a limit of 150MB on the hosting account. The Kentico info says a minumum of 150MB is required, and as above Juraj says 175MB is fine for smaller sites. Well our site was just a few pages, low traffic, hardly any content, so we found a new hosting account that had 250MB RAM and gave that a try - no success. No difference in load time.

After speaking further to support it was mentioned that the portal template sites weren't optimised but just to provide working examples of functionality. I did express our concerns over this as Kentico is sold as a CMS with the ability to create working sites through the portal engine. To me, those sites should be configured to load quickly as i would have thought the common user who uses the portal engine is using that method as they don't have the more experienced .NET knowledge required to build the sites from scratch in .NET.

Anyway, as we have typically been using the corporate site template as a default template to customise, we thought it may be the fact that that template does have all the functionality of the CMS in it as examples. So we tried installing different site templates to see if they make any difference on the load time. They didn't. We even tried creating a blank site from the site wizard, carefully choosing which objects we needed on the import process (removing all functionality were we could - forums/blogs/etc). This minimal site, with just one content page still takes over 10 seconds to load initially. So that didn't help.

We then went through all the "how to optimise" your site links provided by support (see above) and changed our settings where we could. However we felt the majority of these didn't actually relate to the compiling of code that is causing the laod delay. We still haven't really had an answer from support on this issue - mainly being why is the compile time so long and what can we do to the code/site to reduce this.

So to be honest we were getting to the point of looking for another CMS provider as every client has mentioned the slow load time and with using the Kentico CMS for our own site, I could understand their frustrations.

However, in the last couple of days we feel we might have found a solution - albeit not a direct fix with the code. We were told by our hosting provider that the best way was to try and stop the application shutting down through idle time, so that you never get the situation where the site has to compile again as it's always loaded.

How do we do that - by using www.pingdom.com which by itself is an excellent app to have because it monitors and alerts you to any server downtime.

Basically you can set it to ping your website every minute to check if the site is up an running. In doing so, this keeps the application open.

We've been using it as a trial for the last 3 days and every time we have visited our site to test it, it has loaded quickly. Our event log in the CMS still shows the occasional application closure but we're happy with the improvement.

Try it out: www.thefamousgroup.com.au - let me know if it's slow to load for you!

Hope that helps. In summary - didn't get anywhere trying to fix it through the CMS/Site/Kentico/Code/Server/Hosting, but pingdom seems to be a fix.

And if there is any further advice for us to try, please let us know!

Thanks
Michael

Kentico Support

kentico_jurajo - 10/13/2010 3:15:39 AM

RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load

Hi,

Thank you for sharing this.

However, if the issue is related to the idle time settings and recycling the application, there is nothing we can do on the CMS site. Only one thing I can recommend is to use pre-compiled web site. Since you want to have CMS with many features = many files in the web project = longer time to compile. Another option is to use own server where you can set the application behavior according to your needs or, the solution you have mentioned in your post.

Regarding the web site templates - in fact I agree with you, but we have 3000+ customers and it is not possible to create a site template to fit everyones wants and needs. Kentico CMS allows you extended configuration and this is fully up to you how you will set it up and use those options. We can setup caching everywhere - but then someone could complain that the content is not changed, that the memory consumption is too high, etc.

Best regards,
Juraj Ondrus


Member	Frank - BW - 10/13/2010 1:49:59 PM RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load Thanks for your experience with this. I had thought that either pinging every 15 minutes or so would do the trick, but I didn't realize that the site can be precompiled as Juraj pointed out. But this does remove some functionality, so I think pinging or configuring server is best. Thanks to all


Certified Developer v7	fokkens-evident - 10/27/2010 9:02:03 AM RE:Kentico Websites Slow to Load Why the compilation takes so long has the following answer: every folder is compiled into a dll. When you use the Publish option in visual studio to get a precompiled website you will notice a large amount of dlls in your bin folder. I am sorry this does not help, it is inherent to the web site model.