Runtime Page Optimizer for ASP.net - Any comments?

Question

RPO 1.0 (Runtime Page Optimizer) is a recently (today?) released component for ASP and Sharepoint that compresses, combines and minifies (I can’t believe that is a real word) Javascript, CSS and other things.

What is interesting is that it was developed for ActionThis.com a NZ shop that saw at TechEd last year. They built a site that quickly needed to be trimmed down due to the deployment scale and this seems to be the result of some of that effort.

Anyone have any comments? Is it worthwhile evaluating this?

http://www.getrpo.com/Product/HowItWorks

Update I downloaded this yesterday and gave it a whirl on our site. The site is large, complex and uses a lot of javascript, css, ajax, jquery etc as well as URL rewriters and so on. The installation was too easy to be true and I had to bang my head against it a few times to get it to work. The trick... entries in the correct place in the web.config and a close read through the AdvancedSetup.txt to flip settings manually. The site renders mostly correctly but there are a few issues which are probably due to the naming off css classed - it will require some close attention and a lot of testing to make sure that it fits, but so far it looks good and well worth the cost.

Second Update We are busy trying to get RPO hooked up. There are a couple of problems with character encoding and possibly with the composition of some of our scripts. I have to point out that the response and support from the vendor has been very positive and proactive

Third Update I went ahead and went ahead with the process of getting RPO integrated into the site that I was involved in. Although there were some hiccups, the RPO people were very helpful and put a lot of effort into improving the product and making it fit in our environment. It is definitely a no-brainer to use RPO - the cost for features means that it is simple to just go ahead and implement it. Job done. Move on to next task

Answer 1

Just had a little look, a lot of the things they offer you should be able to do yourself with a little palnning and foresight (combine all javascript files, combine all css, minify, enable GZip...

$750 a year seems a little steep, and theres no options.

(edit) After speaking with the marketing bods, it's $499 until end of september, and renewing the liscence will be $199. That persuades me a lot more!

I'm going to give it a whirl and then see how much it improves our DEV server.

Answer 2

minifying and gzipping commonly called scripts and style sheets is totally worthwhile - the file size reduction speaks for itself. That's something that you can do through your webserver, without the help of another product.

However, merging scripts and styles and serving them together is an interesting idea from a general 'the fewer requests the better' standpoint.

It looks like interesting technology - I'd try it out. It almost certainly couldn't hurt.

Answer 3

I love how RPO is plug and play. It will take time to create a module like theirs and depending on work load can be worth the $750/year versus the development time it takes to re-create it.

I'm very excited about RPO and reviewing it's effect on my sites.

Something I used quite recently was page optimization module from I found on Darksider's blog. It it not nearly as intense as what RPO sets out to achieve, but a nice start block to building your own optimization module if that's what you're after.

Answer 4

I decided to answer this question again after evalutating it a little.

• The image combining is really amazing
• The CSS and Javascript is nicely minified
• All files are cached on the server meaning that the server isn't cained every time it makes a request
• The caching is performed at a browser level, meaning it will still work if you use an old (unsupported) browser because you'll just recieve the page un-compressed
• You can see the difference youself Optimized vs Unoptimized

The price is as follows...

• $499 until the end of september is a steal
• $199 for an annual renewal is a steal

Answer 5

I personally have been using a product called PageBlaster by Snapsis that does caching, minification. It is primarily used in DotNetNuke applications, but if I recall correctly it can be used with any ASP.NET application, and the price is right.....

Answer 6

Clarification on the RPO price. Launch price until end of September 2008 is $499 - and this discount is by voucher (email [email protected] to get a voucher). This includes software assurrance for 12 months, after which you can choose to renew for $199 or not - the software still works.

The RPO automates 8 of Steve Souders/Yahoo's principles for High Performance Web Sites - the important thing for us was making a developer friendly tool - you can keep your resources in the format and structure that makes sense for development and the optimization happens at runtime. I don't want to spam this forum with sales stuff, so just email me if you have any questions - [email protected]. Thanks for looking at the RPO.

Ed Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, Aptimize Ltd

Answer 7

I've been a user of the RPO since beta and have it deployed in anger on two of my sites: http://www.syringe.net.nz (My blog) and http://www.medrecruit.com (A company in which I have an interest)

I've done a longish winded blog post on the whole why not just turn on caching question here: http://www.syringe.net.nz/2008/10/21/RuntimePageOptimizerWhyNotJustEnableCachingInIIS.aspx

The short summary version- Caching is a nice to have for people who aren't really geared up to turn it on in IIS (it's still not super easy in IIS6)... the real power is in combining resources as it's latency * request count that really kills your performance.

Answer 8

The comment by "Angus Williams" has been posted on other forums - this is a "troll" post by a competitor to attempt to discredit our product.

For real customer success stories (Linux and Microsoft), see our blog http://www.getrpo.com/blog

You can also email me - [email protected]. We want delighted customers. Trialing our product and getting help to configure your site for maximum speed are both completely free.

Ed Robinson

Chief Executive Officer

Aptimize Ltd