I keep my site loaded with a VBScript file. I happen to have a test server that's running 24x7 so I run it from there, but it could be run from any Windows machine. If you have a box that's up all the time anyway, may as well put it to work. First create a vbs file, for our example, we will create myKeepAlive.vbs in the root of C: (contents below). Now create a scheduled task (Start / ControlPanel / ScheduledTasks). Right click on "Scheduled Tasks" and select "Explore". In the window that opens, right click in the right hand pane and select New -> Scheduled Task. This will create "New Task", give it a new name like myKeepAlive. Now double click to open it (or right click / Properties). In the text area labeled "run" put "C:\Windows\System32\CScript.exe myKeepAlive.vbs" (do not include the "). In the text area labeled "Start in:" put the directory where myKeepAlive.vbs is located, in our example this would be "C:\" (also without the "). Now for the fun part, on the Schedule Tab, set it to start at any time (it will default to 9:00AM). Select Daily, Every 1 Days. Then click "Advanced". In the Advanced Schedule Options, click on "Repeat Task". Say you want to ping your site every 10 minutes (you can pick an interval that is appropriate for your site to keep it loaded). For the "Until:" process, select "Duration", then 23 hours and 60-YourInterval minutes. So if you were every 10 minutes, select 23 hours and 50 minutes. Then select OK and back on the myKeepAlive window select OK again. You will now have a task that runs every 10 minutes forever. Now for the contents of the myKeepAlive.vbs file. DNN installs a file in your portal root "keepalive.aspx". You will load this file every 10 minutes. This will keep your application active. In the example below, the DNN site is located at www.mydomain.com/portal. This example also creates a log file with the response times. Since the keepalive.aspx returns just the current date/time, it is about 100 bytes and should return in 1 second or less. You can scan the output file to see if you are ever getting long response times, which would be an indication that something not right has happened. This process will consume about 435KB of bandwidth in a 31 month day, very affordable.

myKeepAlive.vbs:

Dim HTTP
Dim dStart, dEnd, sSecElapsed
Dim sURL

'*******
'* Define where your keepalive.aspx file is located (DNN portal root)
'*******
sURL = “http://www.mydomain.com/portal/keepalive.aspx”
'*******
'* We are going to use the XMLHTTP object installed as part of Windows
'*******
Set HTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")
'*******
'* Capture the current time
'*******
dStart = Now()
'*******
'* Now do an HTTP GET to the keepalive.aspx file
'*******
HTTP.Open "GET",sURL, False 
HTTP.Send()
'*******
'* We have the response, so capture the end time and calculate elapsed seconds
'* If you don't care to create a log, this section can be deleted.
'*******
dEnd = Now()
sSecElapsed = DateDiff("s",dStart,dEnd)
'*******
'* Here we open our log file, post the current date/time, bytes returned, and elapsed seconds
'*******
Dim FSO, ibFile
Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8
Set FSO = CreateObject ( "Scripting.FileSystemObject" )
Set ibFile = FSO.OpenTextFile("webping.csv",ForAppending,True)
ibFile.WriteLine Now() & ","  & sURL & “,” & Len(HTTP.responseText) & "," & sSecElapsed
ibFile.close
Set ibFile = Nothing

Happy Nuking!

Regards,

Paul