Solr and faceting performance in MVC3 application - asp.net

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In the application we are currently writing we have the ability like IStockPhoto to search for images.
In the case of IStockPhoto, after it searches only the view where the images are loaded are refreshed while the other sections of the site remains.
For us, when we search or click pagination, we load the whole site and this comes with quite a performance hit. Since we are loading the scripts, images and facets (and since many of them are nested inside another it has to be recursively loaded) every time someone searches or wants to go to a different page number.
I was thinking of creating an AJAX control for our section where we load the images so we don't have to refresh the whole page. Hence, no need to reload js files, and no need to recursively load facets (I think this is where we have the most performance hit)
So the question is, should I try to create the AJAX control for retrieving stored images? And if so, are there a lot of changes I have to make in my Views and Controllers?
Or would there be some way I can optimize our loading time?
ps. When Solr is hit the first time, the page loading takes about 15-20 seconds (if my memory serves me correct) and afterwards, it takes about 3-6 seconds to load a site with 25 images in the page. Is that normal? It takes about 1-2.5 seconds to load a section in iStockPhoto.
Thank you...

Related

Very slow "portfolio" section of Wordpress

A client of mine is adding content to his Wordpress. The site is www.airsolid.ca.
He uses "portfolios" to add his different boat models. All seems fine except when we click "all boat models" in the section where it lists all items, it takes up to 30 seconds to load.
Here is the direct link to the section:
http://www.airsolid.ca/bateaux/
Any idea on what I could change to make it load under 3-5 seconds? I have a feeling it loads all images at once... and since there are many, it takes way too much time. Ironically, he doesn't even want the images to show when he lists them.
Use https://tools.pingdom.com to monitor what's loading, how long it's loading, etc. You can see if images or scripts are holding it up.
Since the screen is white while it's loading, I'd imagine it's a query issue. You can use the Query Monitor plugin to help determine the cause.
I used pingdom and got these results: https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ekJpVY/http://www.airsolid.ca/bateaux/
It had 1 request until the ~22 second mark at which point the CSS/JS/Image requests came in, which means that it's not being held up by scripts or images.
The page is only ~2mb, which means it's not loading all the images either. I'd start with Query Monitor - it's definitely something server side, probably a faulty WP_Query or other issue in a PHP loop.

Slow Product Category Page WooCommerce - Need Speeding Up

I have installed and customized WooCommerce Product Pages on my WordPress site, but one of the product category pages takes about 7 seconds on average to load. Other category pages load in around 3 seconds. I am struggling to find the reason for this. There are less products on this page than other pages and less sub-categories. I have installed plug-ins such as 'W3TC' and 'Better WordPress Minify' but it hasn't made much difference.
Has anyone else experienced an issue like this and if so, would you mind sharing how you resolved it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Using caching plugins is fine and dandy but the reason these pages load slowly is simply the data model that WordPress uses, post-types and the metadata look-ups. The only way to truly get speeds up is good hosting and turning on Object Cache on the server.
We enable this on a WP-Engine site and it was night and day. 12 seconds turned into 2.5 seconds.
Object caching
Object Caching is designed to capture queries to the database and store them in memory. This allows you to run an "expensive" query - a query that takes a long time - one time, and then reuse the results again. When used properly, Object Caching can give your site a speed boost by reducing the time that is spent accessing the database. Please note that this change can take a while to take effect.
There can be many reasons for a WordPress pages to load slower. But you problem seems to be unique.
Here are some useful tips by which you can speed up your page loading:
Optimize Your Images
The page on which you are having issue might have High Resolution Images.
Avoid displaying flash on your Page
Avoid too many advertisements
Cut off the Unnecessary ads from the page.
Do not use inline cascading style sheets
Besides utilizing inline cascading style sheets make a CSS file and call up file on all page of your site that will likewise help in repressing download speed.
Put stylesheets at the top - Put scripts at the bottom
Utilize javascript at the bottom of the page this will serve to load up your page fast. When web browser download javascript it will finish downloading your internet site data, and so any analog downloading will end while browser request Javascript downloading.
Use CSS Sprites
A CSS sprite is an an image comprised of other images used by your design as something of a map containing the coordinates of all the images. Some clever CSS is used to show the proper section of the sprite when your design is loaded.
Here you do not have to load multiple images which are used on you site. Just loading of a single sprite image will do all your work.
Limit Your External Scripts
There might be a issue that external script is being loading on that page. You need to check and limit the same.
Add LazyLoad to your images
You can use this technique to load the page part by part.
Control the amount of post revisions stored
I saved this post to draft about 8 times.
WordPress, left to its own devices, would store every single one of these drafts, indefinitely.
Turn off pingbacks and trackbacks
Let me know if the problem resolves using these tips for you site.
The list of suggestions that WisdmLabs mentions above is great!
However, I'm not sure if you've seen the plugin for Wordpress called W3 Total Cache. It has a load of built in functionality to automatically improve the performance of your Wordpress web pages.
It's free and worthwhile using if you are looking to improve the performance across your whole site.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Master page and performance

Can master pages increase performance of the application in case of loading time or it is just to reuse the design and making consistency. Or has it overhead(taking time) while events execution for both the content page and master page.
It is for the reuse of the design and making consistency.
The full page with the master page and the other controls, and all the dependencies, makes a minimal overhead which is so small, maybe 1-2 millisecond, therefore there is no reason to talk about it.
I check now my biggest page, have 87 dependencies* , and it takes 70ms to start showing, all of them are database cost, and not because of the dependencies.
[*] one master, one page, and the rest custom controls, I see the compiled version on the temporary folder and there is a line that shows that.

Progressive page loading in ASP.NET MV3?

I'm building a website that on its frontpage has different 'lists' of stories/articles.
You can compare it to Wordpress 'latest articles', 'spotlight articles' etc.
Now every list needs to be created, and filled from the repository.
Which means, that in my controller, I first create/retrieve all the lists, add them to the ViewBag, and then return the view.
In the View i'll then foreach over the items in that list to create a visual list to be shown on the frontpage.
However, when I load the page, I first get a blank page, when the page is loaded, and then at one point everything appears.
Traditionally, you would already see the basic html, text etc, and then the dynamic area's would appear later.
Is it possible to have a similar 'progressive loading' with MVC3?
Its not so much the performance I'm worrying about but more so the user experience of seeing a blank page for several seconds on data-heavy pages.
Thanks :)
If you've got heavy pages with long loading times you might consider loading the pieces more dynamically using an ajax approach.
Your page loads, you execute the requests for the data you require and use some standard loading icon in the meantime.

VB.Net application - display a message to the user whilst the application is starting up

I have recently created an application where a lot of data is loaded into objects when the application starts up, and other data as it is required. For example if the user requests the catalogue page then it will load all the top level category data into objects of type Category. This will then stay there to be used by other users (who will therefore not have to load this data into objects) and can be altered by admin if they happen to login during the same application instance. I know this is not the most efficient solution, as pointed out below, but it works and the page load, at the moment, is not too long. It is very quick if most of the required data is already loaded into objects. It is also tailored to the business' needs - unlike other techniques such as Linq-to-SQL.
The problem I am facing is when a page is requested which requires lots of data to be displayed about different types of object. For example when a catalogue page is requested which displays information on a product which can be bought, it then loads all the products and categories (as the products make reference to the category object, not just the category name).
I would like to display a loading symbol with a message whilst all this data is being loaded into objects, so the user knows its not just in a loop or anything. Is there any way to do this? I am open to using JS / jQuery if I need to.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Richard
PS I am working on ways to make it more efficient - such as using HashTables or HashMaps. However this is taking time as there are so many different types of item (News, Events, Catalogue Item - Range, Collection, Design, RangeCollection, CollectionDesign, RangeCollectionDesign and RangeDesign - Users, PageViews and the list goes on).
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that Javascript is required in order to display a "loading" image... Using server-side scriping alone would typically require an entire page load after all the content loads unless you want to start messing with IFrames.
This is a job for AJAX. A common solution to your problem is to have a small page that displays a loading icon. The page has some JavaScript that makes additional HTTP requests to the server to download the rest of the page. JQuery has a "$.ajax" method that is designed to simplify this process.
I would suggest looking at the documentation to the .ajax method in the jQuery documentation. Unfortunately, it seems to be a rather delicate process to get all the scripting code right and it takes a while to learn it all.

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