Brandon - Try installing
Turck MMcache as a PHP Module - It basically caches all of the compiled scripts in memory, so for example, every time that someone hits a thread, rather than recompiling that page and all of its includes, PHP just passes on the compiled page w/ whatever changes. I use it on
MacMod.com to provide speed and reliability, and ever since I installed it, page load times have remained ridiculously low (even on a 2ghz celeron w/ 512MB RAM), despite high traffic (and the entire site is Mambo, a MySQL based CMS making a ton of queries etc and generally not being that efficient). It also does a great job with
Gallery2, again decreasing server load and decreasing load time.
If you are looking for a new server (and want to go dedi), I can recommend
LayeredTech (wait around for them to have a blowout special) or
1and1 (their root servers are fairly reasonable), I have a number of servers with both. If you want a hand, feel free to ask
