depends on what you are comparing.

• also what do you mean with download speed?
• Was your previous site also ASP.NET?
• was the previous site also running off of SQL Server
• what sql server version and edition are you using
• is sql server running on the same physical server as IIS
• Are you running with a web hosting company that knows how to tune IIS, sql

lots of other questions as well. There's a lot of tuning you can do to a dnn site, and sadly the documentation is somewhat scattered. We are working on that but ....

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Its hard to compare a static html site against a web application, as there are a lot more factors in play. Static webpages are just streamed to the client by the webserver. Webapplications have server side code that needs to be loaded, database connections that need to be made, data dat need to be streamed from the sql server to the application and then to the client. DNN uses a number of techniques to maximize performance, such as compression, minimizing dlls that need to be loaded, caching etc. Still, there are a few things you can do:

• first of all: every asp.net application takes some time to load if you visit it the first time, as all assemblies in the bin folder need to be loaded. You can minimize this time by removing (uninstalling) all modules from your site that you are not using.
• Also: depending on the skin you are using, there is a lot to be won there too. Some commercial skins are quite bloated
• make sure you've set compression on in host zettings (i always use gzip compression)
• check with your hosting provider how many other asp.net sites are running on the same server. Especially with cheaper hosting plans, hosters cramp a lot of sites on their servers, which means that performance of your site is influenced by other applications on the same server
• If all else fails, check out pageblaster (http://www.snapsis.com/PageBlaster.aspx), i've had success with this on a very slugish site

DNN Blog | Twitter: @erikvb | LinkedIn: