[@backpackersunion Participant 10 years, 6 months ago]

Two ideas.

1. If using a multi-site, start a subdomain for bbPress and activate it on that site alone.

2. Using a plugin called – https://wordpress.org/plugins/plugin-organizer/ As Diphda mentioned, bbPress loads on every page. This plugin can block any plugin from loading on pages where it is not required (for bbPress where there are no short codes or forums).

The only draw back is your Admin panel will still be sluggish for those who are experiencing a similar lag, but visitors will experience faster load times.

Hope this helps.

[@backpackersunion Participant 10 years, 9 months ago]

Bump – because this is the first Google Search result on bbPress slowing down sites.

Everything I read about bbPress said it’s light weight and integrates well into WordPress. Integration was excellent, but the website speed suffered significantly. I finally had to uninstall it and will need to look for a lighter weight forum plugin.

Click here to see a screen shot of the P3 Plug-in profiler results.

bbPress was responsible for half the load time of all active plugins (bbPress was a fresh install – with no forum activity). I had 24 plugins running total which means bbPress was taking longer to load than 23 other plugins combined. With results like that, there has to be a way to make bbPress more efficient either through caching or making bbPress more efficient when it searches for its short codes (which I believe is why bbPress loads on every page).

I’ve seen this concern on a few forums and really want to see bbPress be successful. If anyone has had success speeding up bbPress or believes my experience was an anomaly, please let us know. Thank you.

Website – WordPress 3.8.1 Multisite, BuddyPress 1.9.2., bbPress 2.5.3