Would it be better if after reading a thread (I'm set up for 30 posts per page), I hit my browser's back button to get to message center and choose the next thread, than hitting our in-thread "message center" link?

When you hit "back" is the page refreshed anyway? It is for me. If so, then it doesn't make a difference. If it is somehow cached, and the page looks identical to when you viewed it last (e.g. same number of unread messages, same quote, etc.), then it would be helpful to hit "back".

When you hit "back" is the page refreshed anyway? It is for me

Depends on the browser. For IE on Windows, it seems to always be. For Opera on Windows, nope.

For Mozilla, it seems to always refresh as well.

Opera on Mac also refreshes.

I have ie on Windows XP. I haven't noticed whether or not it's refreshed or not.

Perhaps until we have another solution finished, we could raise the minimum refresh to 10 minutes.

Also, since at the phoenix we are more text based than previous incarnations of the Buffistas, perhaps we should default the "Number of posts displayed on a page" at something like 25 or higher.

What is the default? I immediately set mine at 100 when we moved in.

The default is 10 posts per page.

Well, then, I guess 20 or 25 might be a right good number.

I dunno, I'm just trying to find a way we could temporarily slow down the hits until one of these programming solutions is ready.

I've gone in and put explicit disconnects after the most used database operations.

I'll put them in after everything by the end of today. Hopefully that should have an impact.

My eyes would totally glaze over with 100 posts on a page. I kept adjusting the setting up or down whenever I got impatient or bored, and finally I've settled on 27.