[jemiller226]

Thanks for the quick reply.

The max database size is 700 MB. We were right up against it. The post table by itself was well over 500. I'm storing attachments, avatars, profile pics, signature pics--basically anything I can--in the filesystem, not in the DB. That's the very first thing I changed, but all in all there were so few attachments that it hardly mattered.

The method I more or less stumbled across is this:
1. Prune x amount of threads.
2. Rebuild Thread Information.
3. Rebuild Forum Information.
4. Optimize "post" and "postedithistory".
5. repeat for a while
6. Update Post Counts (because we don't really use that for anything).

Once I did that a few times for ~40-80 threads at a time, things seemed to free up. I'm able to do several hundred threads in one fell swoop now. I hate to think how long it's been since someone bothered to look at any of this.