Thanks for the replies.
,br> imp, thanks for pointing that out. I never learned benchmarking, but i will take it to myself to do so. I guess now is a good time.

Now that I think about it, most of the queries I am talking about for each category are SELECT COUNT(*) from db where id = ? and date = ? and status = ? type of queries....

Meaning it only fetches one row each query. However, all select queries are performed on the same table.

As for the first suggestion by Anon. Monk, the cache method seemed like a very good idea until I realized that this page is dynamic, but needs to act as static. There is a category called "status" where whenever a user receives a message, the status column will print out a "pending" link that will lead to a page that displays the pending messages. The messages aren't meant to be private and are sorta meant to be viewed by the public.

Thanks, Bobby