Another thing you can do is increase your application pool timeout.  Basically, the application pool times out when no-one has visited the site within the app pool timeout length.  Once the app pool has timed out, then DotNetNuke will unload which wil cause the site to load slow.   If you set the timeout to be 24 hours, there's a good chance that the site will never go 24 hours without a page visit, and, in a worst case scenerio, you'll hit that massive loading time once every 24 hours.

Broadcasing from OpenForce Connect,
Tony Valenti
PowerDNN DotNetNuke Hosting

Consider the cost of 3rd party modules.  Most will allow a large number or even unlimited portals in a single DNN install.  Break it out to multiple installs and your module cost goes way up!  This forced me to use multiple portals in one DNN DB.

Advantages:

- One backup gets all portals

- You have one code base and DB to troubleshoot for issues

- Upgrades only have to be done on one code base

Each DNN install is just another 'thing' to maintain and the more ' things' to maintain, the more cost and time you spend

I solved the load time issue by simply running Smarter Ping on my pc and having it ping my site every 5 min.  No more load issues, EVER.

I run dozens of portals with thousands of users on one DNN install and it works great.

Also note that every DNN install takes more server memory so plan on a huge server or servers if you want to install lots of DNN instances and DBs.

To DNN, I believe the difference between a parent and child portal is negligible.  There are sites out there that operate with many, many more total portals than I do with excellent performance.

Brandon