We have a live & deployed ASP.Net application which is quite busy, which takes around 30 – 60 seconds to load when the binary (bin folder) has been uploaded. Currently, we are performing updates and maintenance on a relatively frequent basis (once or twice a day), as this project has just been launched.
The system is currently using 1 web server, and website is hosted on IIS. We do not intend to increase the amount of servers for the time being. Basically, we would like that when the user visit the website, e.g http://www.website.com, they get a splash page, something like:
Website undergoing maintenance and will be back online in a moment
We have tried this approach – In IIS, we have defined the default documents in this order (top is first in priority)
1. splashPage.html
2. default.aspx
Now, when the website is live and OK, we renamed the splashPage.html as splashPage2.html, so that it is not found by IIS, and reverts to the #2 entry, default.aspx. Before we upload, we rename it back from splashPage2.html to splashPage.html, so that it finds it and shows it.
The problem is that it seems that IIS treats the web application as a whole – Even though HTML files require no background processing, if the web application is still loading, the user still has to wait the 30 – 60 seconds until it loads, defeating the purpose of the splash page.
Any ideas how we can overcome this problem, with the current infrastructure?
App_Offline.htm will do the trick for you.
Basically, place this file (including your desired markup) in the root of your Application and your users will automatically see the contents until you take it back out.