Speeding Up the First Page Load in django

Question

When I update the code on my website I (naturally) restart my apache instance so that the changes will take effect.

Unfortunately the first page served by each apache in

Answer 1

How are you running Django (mod_python vs mod_wsgi)?

If you're running mod_wsgi (in daemon mode), restarting Apache isn't necessary to reload your application. All you need to do is update the mtime of your wsgi script (which is done easily with touch).

mod_wsgi's documentation has a pretty thorough explanation of the process:

ReloadingSourceCode