Sitecore Performance Best Practices

IIS Settings

Enable Static/Dynamic content compression - This helps to boost the performance of the application by reducing the page requests to the server, or by browsing the pages. One can utilize static and dynamic compression in IIS.

When you enable 'IIS static content compression', static responses get compressed and cached on the disk across multiple requests, and without degrading CPU resources. By default, static content compression is enabled in IIS.

Sitecore Search Coding Best Practices-

• GetItem() - Never get the object from SearchResultItem like below. Try to get all fields from the index. This impacts the performance badly.

  var result = query.Select(x => x.GetItem());

• Select Statement - Use select statement to get specific fields from the search query. Do not get all the results. It increases IIS payload if we get all the results. i.e. var result = searchContext.GetQueryable()
  .Where(expression)
  .Select(x => new { x.ItemId })
  .GetResults();
• FilterQuery and Query Expression- For Solr search, you should use FilterQuery instead of Query to filter results. Below is an example.
  Where => q -> searchContext.GetQueryable<searchResultItem>().Where(expression)
  Filter => fq ->searchContext.GetQueryable<searchResultItem>().Filter(expression)
  "fq" stands for Filter Query.
  Since filterquery is cached from the main query and doesn't participate in scoring, it improves the performance.
• Paging - Always use pagination to get results from the query. Do not get all results once.
• Computed Field - Utilize computed field feature. Don't execute a complex business logic to get field value after getting search results.
• Indexed vs Stored Fields in Solr Schema - You should review your Solr schema and decide whether you have to set Indexed="true", Stored="true" with custom fields.
  Indexed="true" => means this field will be used for filtering results or for sorting results.
  stored="true" => means we can retrieve this field from the result and use it anywhere for any logic.
  If you have any custom field which you are using only for sorting, you can set stored="false" like below.
  <field name=”namesort” type=”alphaOnlySort” indexed=”true” stored=”false” />
• Inbound and Outbound Index Filters - Use inbound and outbound index filters pipeline to filter unwanted documents from index which reduces index size.

  public class ApplyInboundIndexStandardValuesFilter : InboundIndexFilterProcessor

  {

  public override void Process(InboundIndexFilterArgs args)

  {

  var item = args.IndexableToIndex as SitecoreIndexableItem;

  if (item.Item.Name == "__Standard Values")

  {

  args.IsExcluded = true;

  }

  }

  }

  public class ApplyInboundIndexVersionFilter : InboundIndexFilterProcessor

  {

  public override void Process(InboundIndexFilterArgs args)

  {

  var item = args.IndexableToIndex as SitecoreIndexableItem;

  if (!item.Item.Versions.IsLatestVersion())

  {

  args.IsExcluded = true;

  }

  }

  }

  public class ApplyOutboundNullItemFilter : OutboundIndexFilterProcessor

  {

  public override void Process(OutboundIndexFilterArgs args)

  {

  if (args.IndexableUniqueId == null)

  {

  return;

  }

  if (args.IndexableDataSource == "sitecore")

  {

  try

  {

  var uri = new ItemUri(args.IndexableUniqueId);

  var database = Factory.GetDatabase(uri.DatabaseName);

  var item = database.GetItem(uri.ItemID, Sitecore.Context.Language);

  if (item == null)

  {

  args.IsExcluded = true;

  }

  }

  catch (Exception ex)

  {

  }

  }

  }

  }

  Sitecore Configuration -
  <indexing.filterIndex.inbound>
  <processor type="MyWebsite.Search.Pipelines.ApplyInboundIndexVersionFilter, MyWebsite.Search"></processor>
  <processor type="MyWebsite.Search.Pipelines.ApplyInboundIndexStandardValuesFilter, MyWebsite.Search"></processor>
  </indexing.filterIndex.inbound>
   
  <indexing.filterIndex.outbound>
  <processor type="MyWebsite.Search.Pipelines.ApplyOutboundNullItemFilter , MyWebsite.Search" />
  </indexing.filterIndex.outbound>

• Crawlers -You should use multiple location crawlers in configuration to index if there is no need to index all content, to reduce index size.

Below is the example-

<locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
<crawler type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.SitecoreItemCrawler, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
<Database>web</Database>
<Root>/sitecore/content/Events</Root>
</crawler>
</locations>
<locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
<crawler type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.SitecoreItemCrawler, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
<Database>web</Database>
<Root>/sitecore/content/People</Root>
</crawler>

</locations>

• IndexAllFields - You should avoid indexAllFields =“true". Instead of this, you should add all fields which are being used in search like below.

<include hint="list:AddIncludedField">
<BlogTitle>{C56BBA6B-6A5A-4A31-B80F-A3ED88801E54}</BlogTitle>
</include>

Infrastructure

From an infrastructure point of view, we should consider the below best practices to get better site performance.

• Separate Content Management and Content Delivery Servers
• Use Load Balancer with 2 or more Content Delivery servers
• Separate Solr Master and Solr Slave Servers
• Use Load Balancer with 2 or more Solr Slave servers

All in all, follow these best practices and see how your website performance is enhanced in no time!