My TBH based web site is on a WebHost4Life shared server. The site is in development but it is open to the public. That means I upload a new module of an improved page approximately once a day. I expect to continue this way for at least another month. After that I expect that site changes will average about once a week.

For example this Sunday morning I added sitemap areas and some code behind logic to my Opera Companies page. I did this of course on my local development server. Then I FTPed the new pages up. In the old days of ASP.NET 1.1 I would FTP up the dlls in the bin folder too, but that doesn't seem to be required anymore. As I understand it the new pages are compiled the first time they are accessed by a user. Therefore I click on the recent changed pages and endure a wait so the first real user gets a fast already compiled page.

My questions:

•     
• I thought only the new pages had to be compiled but it seems like the whole site needs to be accessed again.
      
• Is there any way to speed this process up? Can I upload the dlls from my development machine for example?
      
• Is it a better strategy to batch updates into large changes or to send up small changes one at a time?
      
• Are other hosting servers faster than WebHost4Life ? Is the host server slow because it is shared among so many users?

http://weboperahouse.com

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http://weboperahouse.com
http://www.boyleed.com

You seem to have most of the answers already. And your site is terrific, so you're doing some great work.

As you guessed, pages are individually compiled on the first access. The only exception is App_Code, which is compiled completly the first time the site is hit.

To speed it up you can precompile the site into a DLL. This has 2 forms, a partial precompile will leave the .aspx pages "updatable". A full precompile means you can't update individual pages.

You can get a hint of the server load from www.whois.sc - this tells how many other sites are on your same server. The number is often in the 300-400 range, thus explaining the slowness. I'm not complaining - I'm pretty tight with my money and I like the unlimited bandwidth and relatively cheap SQL Server hosting at WebHost4Life.

There are some opportunites to add more caching to TBH. Many pages can have output caching enabled to cut down on the hits to SQL Server. I could write a book on performance tuning alone - it gets pretty complicated sometimes and you have to profile your site to see the effects of certain changes.

The big secret to easily speeding it up is to set up a windows service on your home PC that hits the main pages of your site every couple minutes. This can speed it up considerably. The caches will stay full, and you'll keep connections in the pool for quick re-use. The effect on overall performance is surprising. And there are other reasons for doing this that I can't get into here.

Eric

I forgot to answer if any other hosters are faster: yes, of course. Some of them will give you a dedicated VM server and they'll give you a fairly high percentage of the overall CPU time. But you'll pay a premium for that.

DiscountASP.NET is quite popular. They seem to me to be a little faster, but there prices are a lot higher once you factor-in the cost of SQL Server and the bandwidth surchares you may have. But I know a lot of people who love them.

There are a lot of premium hosting companies. I'd look into that more if I was running an e-business.

Eric

Thanks Eric. What a great idea. I will write that service ASAP.

http://weboperahouse.com

Hi, my plan is to create a databased website using the TBH template. However, I am having problems with finding a suitable hosting company. I have one at the moment who say that they only support sql 2000. My local server i am running on is sql 2005 - will there be a problem if i were to upload my test site to a sql 2000 server do you know?

Any advice on this is sooo appreciated! thanks!

Dear Sootie,

I certainly wouldn't bother with converting back to SQL 2000. If I were you I'd just get a new hosting company. I have used WebHost4Life for about 5 years. They are not perfect but they are cheap and up to date technically.

I have only two problems with them. First of all when I started with them they were small and gave immediate phone help for everybody. Now they only give phone help on the big expensive accounts. They respond back with text to questons in about 24 hours but the answers are often short and cryptic.

Secondly their UI is quite primitive. The site was written in ASP years ago and hasn't been updated. They could really benefit from a NET 2.0 Wizard interface for complex tasks like mounting a completely new site. As it is you have to remember the various tasks and where they are in the menus and, alas, the menus are not very consistent. If I put up a new site regularly I don't have much trouble. But if I haven't done so for a couple months I have forgotten too much and its a struggle again.

.NET hosting seems to be a very competitive business. Its a little like the airlines after deregulation - fares were low but the cariers couldn't afford to provide the level of services they formerly offered. WebHost4Life claims to host more than 100,000 sites now. I only pay them a couple bucks a month. Obviously problems with my account won't command their undivided attention.

I don't know what you mean by suitable. DiscountASP.NET (suggested by Eric) or WebHost4Life should be plenty good enough. I think all of current TBH sites are on a shared host server. Maoggot.TV intends to migrate to a dedicated hosted server but they are doing their own media streaming and need more bandwidth than most others will ever need.

Pat

http://weboperahouse.com