PhpBB is very slow (non-responsive)

Hello,

I have an account on fresca machine and just set up a phpbb forum from one-click-installs panel.

Forum is here:
http://www.wfb-pol.org/forum/
The problem is, it takes extremely long time to generate. Almost two seconds for login page and over 4 seconds for a mere frontpage with list of subforums (the forum itself is practically empty). What's wrong? Such pages should generate under half a second.

After setting up vanilla forum I've added only one extension - categories hierarchy - and I don't think it has impact on speed (have seen more responsive forums with this and many other extensions).

Other two problems, but related only to phpbb and not dreamhost:
1. Newly registered users - actually all registered users - can't see the contents of forum, after logging they can read "there are no boards" on the frontpage. How can I make everything visible to every existing & new user?
2. Newly registered users can't have avatars unless I (as forum admin) manually enter each user's preferences and enable having avatars. How to do it forum-wide?

It all is down to one thing: where in phpbb 2.0.21 administration panel is the bloody panel with user management? The "user admin" category looks like this:
User Admin (category, non-clickable)
Bots management
Prune users
Ban Control
Disallow names
Ranks

works fast when I just went there
almost instant

Yeah, I've installed a vanilla phpbb and after some time it works great :)

In reply to:
I've installed a vanilla phpbb and after some time it works great :)

So the one PHPBB extension you had installed previously (categories hierarchy) was slowing things down?

Mark

Yeah, your site is pretty fast as it is.

No.
I've installed the mod again and it still works perfectly.
I can't tell if this has to do with phpBB available with one-click install or with temporary problems with fresca's performance. I'd bet on second possibility, one-click-install phpbb seems to be same as downloaded vanilla one.

By the way, Dreamhost rocks :)

In reply to:
I've installed the mod again and it still works perfectly.

Cool, thanks for the info. I intend to use PHPBB for a project in the near future and just wanted to be aware of any possible 'gotchas' in advance.

Mark

PhpBB is very slow (non-responsive)