I checked how the new features are effecting the speed of the forum and found that they add only 20 milliseconds to the load time. The database is well over 14MB now (it being over a year old with an average of about 75 to 100 messages a day). I am doing some experimenting with other techniques to speed it up but I am being conservative so not to jeopardize the forum's existence.

A letter is floating around the net that Microsoft's new browser (IE4.0) is slowing down the net in general. Big conspiracy thing. Just the way it downloads components is clogging the net.

We are also busier than ever. We are getting well over a million hits a month now. I'm checking on everything.