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It could be one, the other or both.. While it's possible that too many plugins can slow down load times, it's far more likely that it's one or two that are causing the most trouble.

You can test this by disabling everything but SP, see how load times are, and then enable one by one until you find the problem. And even then, it might not be the plugin that's slowing things down, but maybe something in the configuration of that plugin.

You can use things like W3 Total Cache, but if you decide to use any cache plugins, it's important that the forum is completely excluded from being cached, it's dynamic and appears on one page so caching it will cause big problems!

Good luck!

I think so, although I've not got much experience with cache plugins.. Give it a go, but if it doesn't work, try:

wp-.*\.php
index\.php
/forum/*

It might need the /* to let it know to include any pages past forum.

Is it w3 total cache? if so does it come with any documentation, like a readme or info on the exclude page?