High server load

[pmeenan]

Looking at the dynaTrace results, it looks like you have quite a few javascript modules that are attaching to onload to do their work. jtabs looks like it's the most expensive to initialize but there's also Fx Slide, mootools tooltips, and a couple of others. Replacing them with lighter implementations (or even css-based code) would help with the user-CPU load.

If you can't do any tuning on joomla without breaking the site your only real option is to make sure the mysql database it connects to is crazy-fast because it's usually a ton of queries to generate the page and the time for the queries is what backs things up. The databases are often the weak point for a shared hosting provider as well which probably isn't helping. If you can't enable the page caching, using a query cache of some kind might help (looks like there might only be one available and it's not built-in).

-Pat