Just something I want to confirm/deny for my own thirst for knowledge

If you set up another ubbthreads forum (ie, fresh install) and then archived a load of posts from your open forums (eg, all posts over 6 months old) to the archived forum, would that help reduce server load?
I know it would be a PITA for members to search 2 sets of forums, and I have no immediate plans on doing so, but I'm just curious more than anything else.

As a quick answer? Yes, depending on the size of your forums and your w3t_Posts table.

I have debated doing so many times, but still have not had any large issues.

I think this might be an anenue i'll explore when I start having server issues then!

Not sure if that will make a differece..... one forum or the other, they are still in the post table, and that's the real issue. A better alternative is to set that forum for default to only display 30 days of posts etc.... then it can take advantage of the date index.

Josh - he is talking about two separate MySQL database installs...two separate Posts tables - so sure it would make a difference on the load. The active stuff would be the tables getting hit regularly, and if all old items were moved out to a separate MySQL db - the speed would improve pretty nicely depending on the size of data we are talking about.

Ah - I missed that part. Then yes, a smaller post table is good. Make sure you optimize after you delete the posts youv'e moved (or else the table doesn't get any smaller).