first page parse time high

[hitch]

Hi Guys,

I am having lag times on the first page load and am trying (as a server novice) to work out what is causing it so i can fix it. Even when the server load is pretty good the first/home page load is really slow then mostly fine from there. i have noticed that the first page Parse Time: 5.317 and then from there it mostly drops to the recommended below 1 amount. can i do anything about this or ask the host to do something to fix this?

thanks

[kobra]

If no one has requested your site for some time the first load loads into the server cache and why subsequest requests are faster but 5+seconds is high....I won't instruct your host as to what to do but they should be savvy enough to correct this.

[hitch]

sorry i'm not experienced at this. how should i term the question to the host to be asking to look into the right thing. do i just focus on the parse times and describe the problem and see what they come back with?

thanks

[kobra]

One of my first site page loads is:
Parse Time: 1.263 - Number of Queries: 740 - Query Time: 0.863002237015

Refresh is:
Parse Time: 0.287 - Number of Queries: 740 - Query Time: 0.0885124393463

I would pharse it something along the line of:

I have polled others and my first page load is an average of 2X the time. Is there something that you can do to improve this?