I just ran the new MS SEO toolkit on my DNN site, and it gave a warning saying the view_state is so long it is likely that most crawlers wont get past it to the actual page data. I checked the view_state on my page and it is vast - is this normal?

The SEO tool is correct, though possibly dated.  And DNN's view_state is incredibly long.  But most crawlers now ignore the view_state.  You can also use some tools to move the view_state to the bottom of the page code, I think this one still works:

http://www.csharphelp.com/archives4/archive681.html

Also, DNN version 4.8(?) moved the view_state to the bottom of the rendered page, making this a moot point.

Jeff

Paul,

an excessive view state may significantly affect page performance, we once had a client with a very slow page. it turned out, that he applied an aggregator module wich increased his page size to more than 1 MB with more than half being view state.

Regarding view state, I suggest to read here and here. In summary, from my experience, most module developers do not optimize view state of their modules, adding Enableview_state="false" to all controls, which don't need it. try to tweak aspx of typical modules on your page and compare performance and view_state size.