Speeding up ouor forum
 

I have had a few of my members complain about the speed of our forum, www.TruthInDetailing.com.
The main complaint seems to be with the time it takes a post to show after they hit the "Post Reply" etc button.
The forum is being hosted by 1and1 and the amount of disk space, monthly transfer volume seems to be more than adequate.

This is an automotive detailing forum. We have a large number of professional detailers who post pictures of their work in their posts. But, the pics are hosted on Photobucket, ImageShack, et al. We are not hosting the pics.

Page loads can sometimes be sluggish.
I have an ongoing battle with spammers registering, my list of banned IP addresses is considerable, even with wildcards.

I am considering adding a plugin from C&D Systems that will add a photo gallery of sorts, more than what PhotoPost does. Their software is called C&D Garage. The cost for it is minimal, but the pics have to be hosted on our servers. So, if this will slow the forum down even more, I have to make a big judgement call whether to install it or not.

Is there something I can do to "juice" the forum's speed?
Any ideas or suggestions would be welcomed.

Michael

You should post to get help optimizing your server over at the Server Configuration forum at vb.com.

Thanks, Lynne.
Much appreciated.
Michael