Is the site database-based or just HTML?
I think you first need to determine how long bbPress is actually taking to generate a page, and how long it takes to generate the other pages on the site. You can start with _ck_’s mini-stats plugin for bbPress.
https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/mini-stats/
[edit: see johnhiler’s link below to the bb-benchmark plugin]
And, on the other part of your site, what is running that? Is it WordPress or just static HTML? If it’s WordPress, you can get a plugin as well to point out performance bottlenecks.
Regardless of what type of software a site (your site) is running, there are lots of tools you can run in your browser to find performance bottlenecks.
Firefox (you need that to run most of these add-ons)
Firebug (all around awesome tool)
Y Slow from Yahoo!
Google Page Speed
There are tons and tons of performance add-ons for Firefox but these will get the job done.
Also, what host are you on, and can you post the URL here so others may see the performance first hand?
And a plugin or extension is probably not going to make your site any faster. There are no plugins I know of that will speed up bbPress. I think you first want to establish a baseline for the performance of the site, then you can fix the easy things first and move on from there.
Great advice from chrishajer!
The only thing I’d add is that this plugin can be helpful in counting your queries, and identifying which plugin is slowing your site down:
https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/bb-benchmark/
Good luck!
johnhiler, I think that’s the plugin I meant to link to. I don’t even know what mini-stats does! (I see you rated the plugin; can you describe what it does?)
Thanks for posting the link to bb-benchmark.
0.9 or 1.0 and what is the environment your server is on.
If you don’t know what that means just give us a PHPINFO.
If you are on a host with NFS (like dreamhost) bbPress and WordPress
(or anything relying on alot of files) will be slow.
If you’re unsure of what PHPINFO is, put this into a file called info.php on your web server, then access it with a browser at http://www.example.com/info.php and paste the info somewhere where we can see it.
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Ah ok, yah mini-stats is a great dashboard plugin which lets you know how many users you have… how many posts and topics they’re creating… and other key metrics like that.
I check it almost every day, and couldn’t run my sites without it… I find it to be one of the most useful plugins out there, if you’re managing a site for growth. 
Thanks guys. Will try out the above and give you an update.
