I have learned from around 50 client sites that 99% of the time most DNN sites aren't properly setup to begin with and that causes most of the issues. For example half my clients didn't turn on the compression settings, nor did they put heavy caching options on, nor did they cache the authentication. All of which helps performance. Then the biggest performance gain you can do for your DNN installation is cutting down the number of logs it tracks. By default there are around 10 logs DNN keeps and it trackes ever user / hit to the site, and all sorts of data which is ALL sent for storage to the database. Most of the logs can be turned off cause they really aren't needed for most sites. Now if you really wanted to track everything going on then leave them on, however for most "public" facing sites there is little need to keep track of all the details the log files keep track of. After that you can fine tune the scheduler to make sure its not over active. To me the default install settings are a bit rough. Back down some of the frequencies and poof your DNN site blazes along.

While pageblaster is a great tool, if you take the time to properly configure your site and determine what you want to log and what not to. You will quickly find that pageblaster's performance gains start to disappear. Now for a default installation needing a pick me up. Then by all means use pageblaster you will be glad you did. If you understand how to configure DNN then go that route cause you will speed it up greatly.

Just realize its not the asp.net page that is causing the slow loads, DNN could be 100% html and still would run as just as slow if that html had to check user authentication, log the results, approve/disapprove user, log those results, begin rendering page, log that, then display the page.

I still use pageblaster but find it to be more of an annoyance cause all my sites load almost instantly and I have to keep removing / adding it back with every DNN version, which is not bad on a few clients but when I am doing it for 50+ clients its a bother.

Its a good tool though, and I recommend it for most users.

So far the best setting on average I find just server works best. From what I can tell the server and no cache just pushes the authentication to the server which saves a client trip back. While just server actually causes the authentication to cache on the server. Note this mainly helps with sites that use complex security setups with lots of roles that constantly need checked. If your site is mostly set to all users, then I suggest serverNoCache and save the cache resources for other items. However on one of my sites I saw a huge performance gain, but its a complex site where about 6 different security groups are all affecting about 12 different modules on each page.

The best advice though is to just play around with the settings / ask others that use your host. Each host is very different, some focus on fast DB speeds other focus on insane ram amounts, others focus on server clusters. The right settings for your DNN installation can really depend more on your host then anything. I do however suggest everyone do their own speed tests and just tweak / play around with the settings inside of your Host / Site settings. You will be amazed at how fast you can make a slow DNN site with just a few clicks.

Pageblaster is great, but use it to the max by first properly configuring your DNN installation, then use pageblaster to gain even more speed. IE don't do one or the other cause it fixes your problem, do both and you will quickly find yourself (baring you have a decent host) blazing around faster then a small html site and you have total control over the site's connent on the fly.