If you’ve been around SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010 or just .NET for any amount of time, you know that pages are not compiled until the first time a server request is made to view them. This causes the first load to be the slowest.

There have been numerous solutions for this, most of them are some form of a warm-up script.

In SharePoint 2007, there were a few versions; all of which used the command-line STSADM tool to basically enumerate all sites in a web application and then submit an HTTP request to cache the pages on the server side.

In SharePoint 2010, the STSADM based scripts still work; but why use them? We have PowerShell!

I found some really good examples of PowerShell based Warm-up scripts, but none of them served my purposes or my clients. Since I’m really starting to dig PowerShell, I decided to do my part in the SharePoint community by developing my own version of the SPWarmup script.

#################################################################################
## SPWarmUp.ps1 - Enumerates all web sites in web applications in a SharePoint  #
## 2010 farm and opens each in a browser.  This version does not use STSADM	#
## and instead uses PowerShell.							#
## 										#
## Notes:									#
## -"get-webpage" function borrowed from:					#
## http://kirkhofer.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/sharepoint-warm-up-script/		#
##										#
## Assumptions:									#
## -Running on machine with SharePoint 2010 installed				#
## Although bits and pieces were borrowed from Kirk Hofer and Martin Laukkanen,	#
## The final working version with nice enhancements is courtesy of Ryan Dennis.	#
## www.iccblogs.com/blogs/rdennis - Twitter: @SharePointRyan			#
#################################################################################
  
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

# By uncommenting the following lines as well as lines 54-60 you can warmup other sites such as SSRS #
#$extrasitelistfile = 'c:\warmup-extrasites.txt'

Start-SPAssignment -Global  
function get-webpage([string]$url,[System.Net.NetworkCredential]$cred=$null)
{
   $wc = new-object net.webclient
   if($cred -eq $null)
   {
     $cred = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultCredentials;
   }
   $wc.credentials = $cred;
   return $wc.DownloadString($url);
}
  
#This passes in the default credentials needed. If you need specific
#credentials you can pass them in to elevate the permissions.
#Or run this task as a user that has a Policy above all the Web
#Applications with the correct permissions
  
$cred = [System.Net.CredentialCache]::DefaultCredentials;
#$cred = new-object System.Net.NetworkCredential("username","password","machinename")
  
$apps = Get-SPWebApplication -IncludeCentralAdministration
foreach ($app in $apps) {
$sites = Get-SPSite -WebApplication $app.url -Limit ALL -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -WarningAction SilentlyContinue
foreach ($site in $sites) {
Write-Host $site.Url;
$html=get-webpage -url $site.Url -cred $cred;
}
}

## Warm up other sites specified in warmup-extrasites.txt file (such as SSRS)
#if (test-path $extrasitelistfile) {
#   $extrasites = get-content $extrasitelistfile
#   foreach ($site in $extrasites) {
#     write-host $site;
#     $html=get-webpage -url $site -cred $cred;
#   }
#}

Stop-SPAssignment -Global