[_ck_]

Oh and bbPress’s (and WordPress’s) biggest weakness is not mysql queries – it’s actually all the plugins loading.

Unless you use an opcode cache or have really good disk caching on your host, loading a dozen or more plugins can cause those longer delays.

If you are on a VPS, you need eaccelerator or some other opcode cache. A few shared hosts like dreamhost let you install your own copy of php+fastcgi and eaccelerator too (but I do not recommend DreamHost, quite the opposite).