In need of ways to reduce queries! And also a small question!

[Velocd]

I'm currently going through most of my PHP files insuring that templates used are in the $templatesused part of the code in the top, such as my forum/index.php. Especially with index.php, but even when I do this my forum home page still has a massive amount of queries (it reduced by 2). I don't have too many hacks installed on the forum home, just some statistical ones. But, well..(here comes the ugly part), I have 40 queries on my forum home. What could be some other causes of how these queries are being generated other than the obvious $Db_site->query(" function? And maybe some solutions to go along

I have a small question also. In the newthread.php, and similar posting files also, at the very top are two $templatesused lines, but one of them is full of vbcode templates, and has a dot just before the = sign.

ie:

newthread.php:

$templatesused = "newpost_postpreview
$templatesused.="vbcode_smilies

What is the purpose of the dot, and why not just include the vbcode's in the above templateused list? Could it be a method of organization?

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to learn as much as I can to prevent future problems for myself.