I've made a move to a larger, more robust database hosting plan. It will take about 24 hours for the new database hosting plan to take effect; after that point, I'll have more than triple the database bandwidth, which should (knock on wood) solve the problem.
The site might experience momentary (one or two minute) glitches over the next few hours, but it shouldn't need to be taken offline for this change. Bear with me, and let me know starting tomorrow evening if you see any change in the forum's performance, for better or for worse.
