Reducing Sitecore Startup Time

Loading....please wait....sigh!

I've noticed that starting the application takes about 2 minutes, establishing a connection in Sitecore Rocks takes another 2 minutes, previewing a page takes another 2 minutes! Multiply that by the number of times per day or week you start an application and this is not just VERY frustrating, but a huge waste of valuable development time!

 

namespace TechGuilds.Web.layouts.WeBlog
{
    using System;

    public partial class BlogCategoryHeader : System.Web.UI.UserControl
    {
        private void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            BlogCategoryTitle.DataSource = Sitecore.Context.Item.ID.ToString();
            BlogCategoryTitle.DataBind();
        }
    }
}

 

While looking for ways to deal with this issue, I found this excellent article by Sitecore MVP Kam Figy, and I ended up decreasing the loading times by about 60%! The article goes in-depth on the issue but here is a simple overview of what I did:

1. Navigate to and open the file Sitecore.Speak.config located in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\{Instance Name}\Website\App_Config\Include.

2. Disable the SPEAK precompilation features as shown below:

   

3. Do the same in Sitecore.ContentTesting.config, which is located in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\{Instance Name}\Website\App_Config\Include\ContentTesting:

   

4. Navigate to your Web.config file (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\{Instance Name}\Website) and set optimizeCompilations to "true" as shown below:

   

These steps greatly decreased my loading times, thanks for the great article Kam!