This is probably a dumb question, but I'm curious what exactly constitutes a "query" (as seen in the debug footer) -- I mean, I know basically what a query is, but can't figure out this discrepancy...

My Forum says total of 21-23 queries
ubbcentral says 11-13 queries
ubbdev & fanfocus say 8 queries

Why would I have so many more queries (I have fewer forums than here), and why would the number of queries change reloading the same page?

When a page is loaded your seeing the results of XX queries.

So your Database is being asked xx times for info.
In the form of a query for each.

It may rise and fall depending on how many users are online
or how many forums are active, but i'm not that sure.

Thats my take on it

Cached information is updated once in a while, and updating those is triggered by normal pageloads. Each time a page is loaded a check is made if something extra has to be done, and if so, it does it.

So one time it might just load the page you are looking at, the next time it will also update the who's online island, and next time it updates an RSS feed etc.

That explains why the number of queries can differ each time you load the same page.

Thanks, yeah, I understand the different # of queries per page load, but any idea why I'd have so many more queries total than the other sites mentioned?

I just had a look as guest on your forum, and only had 8 queries on the main index. Could be that it runs an extra mile in updating cache information because you are logged in as admin. Don't really know, it's a wild guess.

When ever i read questions of a unknown i like to reply
with "Its because your special"