Cache home page only?

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Kay Yuan

Posts:33

01/25/2008 11:32 PM
It looks like impossible to cache the whole site (with quite a lot content) since there is a memory limitation from hosting server. Any way we can get only the home page cached with pageblaster?

John Mitchell
Posts:2779

01/26/2008 8:09 AM
One nice feature of PageBlaster is that it automatically adjusts for the memory limit you set. If you only want to use 1MB of memory you can change that in the config file. Most hosts should at least allow you to have 25MB which is the default, but if DNN itself is taking a lot of memory then you may be hitting the hosting limit that way. Even if you hit the PageBlaster configured memory limit, the pages will still be cached to disk and be served very fast. PageBlaster also automatically puts the last used pages in memory if the limit has not been reached so your home page should always be in memory if you call it right after restarting your application.

Kay Yuan

Posts:33

02/04/2008 1:50 PM
Thanks for the replay. Now I have something good to share: Before my site always went down after a few days (3 or 4) using page blaster. So I had to stop using it. Recently I started trying it again since my site really needed some performance boost. By accident, I discovered that if I periodically shrink the database (more frequently than the hosting comany does) the issue went away. I've been running the site with pageblaster on for a week and half and no problem at all. While I am taking this as absolutely a great news I am wondering if there is any "side effect" for me to shrink the database so often? Any advice is appreciated. Thank you for the utility. My site traffic always go up when I use pageblaster.

John Mitchell
Posts:2779

02/04/2008 1:57 PM
Shrinking the DB should have no negative effect, and using PageBlaster will help also because it keeps the Database from even being used on most requests. I'm curious if you are using SQL Express for your DB. Is it a file in your site's app_data folder?

Kay Yuan

Posts:33

02/04/2008 2:08 PM
No I am not using the SQL Express. I use webhost4life's VPS plan and I do the "Shrink DB" thing from their control panel (only one click). I remember one support guy said they don't encourage customers to do that (shrink db). They do it once every two weeks. Now I am doing it once every two or three days.

John Mitchell
Posts:2779

02/04/2008 2:27 PM
Shrinking the DB can have a small negative effect if it is a large database that grows very fast. This is because it takes a little longer to increase it's size again if it needs too. But on a small site that is not doing many inserts it will not be noticeable.

Kay Yuan

Posts:33

02/11/2008 12:05 PM
The site went down last night again (while I was sleeping). All I did was to "Shrink the DB" to bring it back this morning. I noticed that the db size was close to 10G last night... After "shrink" the db size is around 31M. But the db can reach 5GB within a day if I don't shrink it. (sometimes 3GB a day if the site has less traffic). Specifically what it will look like if there is any negative effect from doing "shrink db"? Site down? Thank you for the help. It looks like I can use pageblaster with ease if I can get this straight.

John Mitchell
Posts:2779

02/11/2008 12:17 PM
It sounds like something is wrong if your site is growing that large in just one day, especially if you can shrink it back so small. Are you doing a lot of transactions (updates and deletes) to the DB? Maybe you are getting a lot of trafffic and it is going into the site log. If so, I would turn off the DNN site log and use something like Google Analytics. Specifically, what will happen if you notice a negative effect from shirinking is that the site may be slow to respond if the DB has to grow again, especially if you are growing in small increments. This is not something that will usually be noticed though.

Kay Yuan

Posts:33

02/11/2008 12:49 PM
Thanks for explainning it. Yes I have been doing some updates and deletes on the site. The site used to have around 7000-10000 page views daily. After using pageblaster the page views went up to 15000-19000 page views daily. Pageblaster has greatly helped the page views. I do use google analytics but I also like to view the dnn site log. I truncate the site log table frequently (at least once every two hours) and I always disable the site log duing the night. I guess I can just keep doing the "shrink db" thing for now. Thank you again!

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