Ideas to temporarily max optimize vB

[TitanJeff]

Here's my situation...

I run a football forum. For all but 20 days a year, my weak dedicated server does an adequate job running the forum. But on game day, we're hit with lots of database errors due to the dramatic increase in traffic.

Instead of upgrading servers, I was wondering if there was anything I could do to keep my forum running on these busy days were we may have 300 members on at once.

In the past, I've turned off guest viewing which helps a little but I would love to know every CPU-hoggish feature I can turn off. What would be even better is having a hack which I could turn on which does things like turn off signatures, turns off access to guest, rss feeds, etc.

Anyone know of such a product or checklist? Thanks.