CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.netperformancekenticomicrosoft-ajax
Tom Troughton
Tom Troughton

Reputation: 4325

Managing/removing unnecessary scripts in live Kentico site

We're building a Kentico 8.2 site using ASPX+portal model. Looking at the rendered HTML on my live site I can see a lot of unnecessary Javascript that Kentico has dumped into my page. What's more this is occurring at the top of my page at the top of the form element.

For example, it's rendering the ASP.NET __doPostBack JS function even though I'm not using any controls that require it. Other scripts are being added as WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd includes.

At a glance it would seem these scripts constitute the Microsoft AJAX framework used with UpdatePanel etc. My assumption is that they are there to add portal manager functionality when using the page in the Kentico UI. Presumably they are also used with certain built-in web parts.

However, I am only using custom web parts on my live site so all these scripts are doing nothing and are just slowing down my page and causing poor performance testing results.

I've tried hiding the <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager /> and <cms:CMSPortalManager /> controls on my master page when rendering the live site, but this causes templates that have a <cms:CMSWebPartZone /> to break.

Does anyone know how to ensure this bloat is removed when not required? Or at the very least cause these scripts to be rendered at the end of the page so they don't interfere with performance too much?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1165

Answers (2)

Surinder Bhomra
Surinder Bhomra

Reputation: 2199

Unfortunately, building sites within Kentico using ASPX and ASPX+Portal Pages will automatically generate additional markup such as __doPostBack, WebResource.axd and ScriptResource.axd.

I wouldn't recommend removing any of the default code in your Masterpage. This will cause things to break (as you've experienced).

However, having this markup in place shouldn't cause a massive issue in page performance. Understandably, this isn't ideal.

What I do to lessen the hit is the following:

  • Disable the ViewState wherever possible. For example, either at Page Template or Webpart/User control level.
  • Move the ViewState to the bottom of the page (in Kentico Settings), so the page is less "top heavy".
  • Ensure you are caching everything you can. For example, site furniture used by your webparts and templates (images/js etc) at IIS level and at Kentico level using their API.

Reading this article from the Kentico documentation provides some more information in greater depth: Optimizing website performance

If you really want "full control" over the HTML rendered, Kentico does allow you to create templates using MVC. But this won't give you the flexibility to modify Page Templates by moving around web parts within the CMS Administration. I presume you have chosen the Portal Page approach for this very reason.

I hope this helps.

Upvotes: 3

Brenden Kehren
Brenden Kehren

Reputation: 6117

In addition to @sbhomra's great answer I have a few questions, suggestions and comments.

How many seconds or milliseconds are you talking about with performance? If you think you'll gain a few milliseconds back, it's not worth your effort to try to rebuild all the functionality. If you're talking a second or two, there about 15 different things you can change within settings and your code to gain it all back. Think about how much code you're going to write, maintain and upgrade just to gain a second or less back?

The WebResource and SciptResource load resources that are compiled into libraries within the website. So if someone created an external library and that library was loading an image that was compiled into it, you'd get that WebResource.axd reference on your site. You'd have to physically remove those libraries from the Kentico instance.

Although I don't recommend it strictly because you lose so much functionality and have so much extra unnecessary code, MVC will give you the control you're looking for.

Upvotes: 2

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