Azure Websites (Free and Shared instances, specifically) like to shut themselves down if they receive no traffic for a while. This can lead to slow page loads when a user arrives to the site after a period of activity.
Monitoring the site will poll it on a regular basis which, in turn, keeps the site alive.
Adding Azure Endpoint Monitoring to Basic or Standard instances can keep your site alive, but this isn’t available for Free and Shares sites. To get around this, we use a free Pingdom account.
- Sign up for Pingdom Free Website Monitoring at pingdom.com/free
- Go to the Dashboard tab
- Add Uptime Check
- Set an interval of less than 20 minutes (I chose 5, so not to hammer the site)
- We want Web/HTTP(S) Monitoring, enter the URL of your site you want to keep warm
It’s as simple as that!
