Any specific suggestions on how to improve first load time of pages for a Web App (using .NET 4.5 / VS 2013)?

- I had attempted to do the 'precompile during publish' feature of VS, however, all of IronSpeed's generated GetResourceValue code snippets cause every .ASPX to fail precompilation. Some of these I could fix and just put hard code/text into them, but some I can't (IronSpeed generated with no user access).. not to mention I've got a couple hundred pages thus far. 

- We're currently storing View State in the Page. I'm hesitant to flip that switch in IronSpeed to Session or Cache without knowing the repercussions (and benefits) of switching it (can I switch it back if it doesn't help? -- does it help?). 

- Anyone ever written any 'warmup' scripts that run every so often and 'warm up' every page -- or at least some of the bigger/slower pages/code files?

Thanks in advance,
RJ

RJ,

                 There are many options some hacks and others supported by MS.  A quick hack is to use task scheduler to launch a browser passing it the site as a parameter.  You might be able to use powershell to perform something similar.  I’ve seen this mentioned before but never used it.

                 First make sure that you have debug set to false in the web.config.  This is a sure performance killer!

                 Some things you can do to make the application load faster in general is to make sure that you are using compression (gzip) for the site.  Set expiration headers far in the future for static content.  Minify your css, js files and bundle them if possible.  Use Yslow to help you understand where the site is the least responsive.  Use the network tab in browser developer tools to determine what content is taking the most time to load.  If possible defer loading your javascript files.

 These changes will make the application more responsive in general.

                 There are other options depending on the version of IIS that you are running the application on. IIS 7.5 has the option to add startMode AlwaysRunning to the applicationhost.config file for the application pool that your application is running on.  Google Application Initialization Module for plenty of examples.  As of IIS 8 application initialization is part of the platform.  For IIS 7/7.5 there is a separate download available via the web platform installer.