Simply removing the popup from the frontend isn't enough, the underlying queries all use LEFT JOINS when they should be INNER JOINS. There needs to be a way to turn off the functionality entirely, including preventing the profile queries from running. This is a big problem on the main page.
So I've track my problem down to this query. The problem seems to be caused from remnant elements after mess purging users with 0 posts from VB via the VB purge system. Not everything got removed causing a bunch of user_id to be set to 0 in xf_profile_post.user_id. This causes the second LEFT...
So I have an interesting problem after importing a VB 4.2.5 forum into XF 2.2.3. When I try to load forum.php the browser just spins for close to 14 minutes before rendering the page. I've tried everything I can think of but can't settle on an error anywhere. No database errors, no Apache/PHP...