>>>>>>>I have a small ASP.NET application used by a number of customers. Yesterday one of the customers brought up an issue that it takes too much time on loading the first page. I tested on my PC (I use IE 6.0) and I can see the issue. It takes about 10 seconds to load the first page the first time. The good news is that after the first time, each subsequent load of the page is very fast (almost instantaneous). So it seems like there is some kind of caching issue here. My question is, is it the caching on the web server or Internet Explorer? What can I do to improve the speed of loading the main page the very first time?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Are you precompiling the pages? It makes a serious difference in the time it takes to open a page the first time..
>>>>>>
>>>>>>http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms227972.aspx
>>>>>
>>>>>No, I have never done this procedure. I am reading the link you provide and can't seem to understand (my mind right now is on 4 different projects); do I precompile the pages right on the custom web server or I have to do it on my development machine before shipping the project (.DLL) to them?
>>>>>
>>>>>Thank you.
>>>>
>>>>IIRC do it on the production server. That is how I have done it.
>>>
>>>Thank you very much. I also found a couple of other articles on the web about precompiling. This could be exactly what I need.
>>
>>I think you can precompile on your development machine too now that I think about it.
>
>Yes, I plan to do it here on my notebook first, as a test. I just want to read more and understand it fully before I do it. Like I am not clear (from the article you referenced) what is the "virtual path of your web site" and if my application is or is not "an IIS application, and therefore has not entry in the IIS metadatabase".

Microsoft tends to make things sound worse than they are.

Try..

http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=74&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

or

http://aspalliance.com/717_Precompilation_in_ASPNET_20.all

for more straightforward explanations.