[Simon Lloyd]

Bots and search engines don't need the link in order to crawl it, most bots have a preprogrammed list of urls to start at. You can leave online.php enabled including the links but you turn off all guest privilidges to view it, do the same for the stats.

I think Max_Taxable is making reference mostly to your host, your system, provided by the host, is delivering the first byte, or if you like shaking hands with the person requesting the page, in far to long a time.

As for your requests either reduce the number of stats you show and auxiliary bits n pieces or use some type of compression, try to amalgamate js files and minify them, compress your css files. Change your images from being a lot of individual images to one sprite and then deliver them from co-ordinates on the sprite.

There really is a ton of stuff to do if you know how and can be bothered ( I don't say that like you're not I say it because sometimes it all gets a bit to much and can put you off)!