I moved my site to a new host. Everything seems to be working with the forum, but I just want to check if there is something that I should tweak or update to optimize performance.
Also is there anything that affects load speed of the forum which can be improved? When I test the forum in GTmetrix or pingdom, it loads considerably slower than my other pages. Is this normal or is there something I can do about it?
It is not realistic to make a direct comparison between the forum loading time and other pages within a WordPress site. WordPress posts and pages are static. The do not change from moment to moment, they can generally be shown to anyone (even if needing to be logged in to the site) and the data underpinning the display is very lightweight.
Forums are completely the opposite. On a busy forum, the data can be changing and being added to second my second – often with many users adding content simultaneously. This makes for a very rich environment but the cost will always be the extra ‘work’ the code and database has to do to load up a view. Remember too that the forum display is uniquely tailored for the current user loading the page. One user will see a different view than the next user depending on what the have and have not read, what their forum permissions are and what forum or topic they may be looking at. And even on a quiet forum, the checks and changes are still required.
I would suggest taking a look in our codex at this page however: https://simple-press.com/documentation/codex/installation/installation-information/performance-notes/