Here is what happens when I attempt to edit a group description on my site. I can refresh the page and it will save the changes, but this constant erroring out isn't good for my members.

Elizabeth, the errors you are talking about occur because the site resources consumption exceeds the server limits.

The first error "Fatal error: Allowed memory size of....." means that your site consumes more php_memory (the amount of memory which is dedicated for the php scripts execution) than allowed. As far as we can see from the screenshots your site consumes more that 256 Mb - that's too much. To find out the reason of such amount of memory consumption, you should answer the following questions:

What type of hosting plan do you use (shared or dedicated)?
What is the server characteristic?
How many users do you have?
How many users are online simultaneously?
How many plugins do you have installed on the site?
What are the versions of the software/plugins?

The second error (MySQL server has gone away) may occur for several reasons. But generally it happens by the server fault - the software does not receive the response while the query is executing.

Seems this happens with the particular group only. If so, there is some loop caused by the incorrect group creation. Try to re-create this group.
If you face this problem with all groups - make sure that you did not make any changes within the Groups or Newsfeed plugins functionality and try to deactivate all third-party plugins to exclude them from the list of possible causes.

Thank you. I will try all and let you know if problems persist. :)

Ok, keep us updated.

So I talked with my host, and the memory allotted for my site is 512mb. So it isn't lack of memory for the site. I have about 150 users I think on at various times (never all at the same time), shared hosting tho my host and I are talking about switching to dedicated as a test run. I am on virtual server (host checked and the server and other sites are showing no issues - it is just my site). I do have multiple plugins installed, but until this update, they have never caused an issue nor used up this much memory (and yes, they are all updated for the updated Oxwall version).

The group issue is resolved by doing what you suggested. But the other issue persists with the slow loading (takes 1.5 or more minutes to load the dashboard).

Elizabeth, shared hosting can handle like 10-15 users and 2-5 concurrent online users, even with that amount of users the site will be slow. Read my reply here: http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/29251?page=1#post-125577 please.  

How many active users do you have? You say your dashboard take 1.5 minute or more to load - how many friends and members you follow do you have? How many of them are active (posting any content)?

I will check that post. However even on dedicated (we started the test run that day and went back to shared yesterday since there was no improvement), the site is still running slowly and leaking memory everywhere.

We have anywhere from 1 to a dozen users online at any given time. We have about 150 members in total. I personally follow 44 members though only about half of those are active online on a regular basis and the majority of those only "like" content (don't actively post content). New content is posted to the site maybe once or twice a week. Mostly it is just likes and replies to existing content.

I have stripped my site down to the barebones - almost exclusively Oxwall only plugins except a one or two others (down from having about 20 plugins plus Oxwall plugins). All the fluff is gone. The site is still leaking memory and running just as slow as it did with the fluff. It did not do this before the platform update.

Elizabeth, try to register another user and check if the site is slow for him/her as well

Keep us updated

Just created a new user. Everything is super speedy for them and loads instantly.

I'm having this issue with my site as well. Since upgrading to 1.7.5, the site is loading very slowly. Prior to this, it was very fast. I have the Bluehost Pro Hosting plan, Amazon S3 Cloud, the OxArt Speed Optimizer, and an optimized .htacess file. I didn't change anything other than upgrading.

Assistance would be greatly appreciated. I worked hard to attain speed and I feel that I've lost ground.

1.7.5 crashed my sever  it shit down sql server 
i have not had time to chase the problem
Speed Optimizer plugin actual slows my site loading down by long way

lower the sql max open files limit helps a lot
1.7.5 seams  to just keep opening conections and not close them 

Tammy, 1.7.5 does that on my site too - connection after connection is opened. No matter what. The longer a user is a member of my site, the slower their speed becomes - even the new user I recently created. That account is already starting to be impacted by the issues from the upgrade.

restart your sql server and see your site runs like a rocket untill everything gets maxed out again

Elizabeth, as you can see now with the new user the site is fast, please read my reply here: 

http://www.oxwall.org/forum/topic/29251?page=1#post-125577

Musik, contact your hosting provider and request to provide database tracking logs to see what exactly is causing this slowness. 

SQL restart did nothing. The site is still resource heavy the moment it tries to load. And for the new user, they are slow now and load virtually nothing (no friends, no old/new messages, no posts, no friend's posts, etc). I have stripped my site of virtually everything that made it unique and desirable (almost zero plugins now except the essential to do something like newsfeed and messages). Still slow with a minute plus load time for most pages.

What am I supposed to do? I have done everything you have asked so far and so has my provider... and my site is getting worse. I have spent a lot of money creating and maintaining that site/community and really do not want to start over. Will there be an update coming out or patch or anything that might address the memory issue?

try lower the max open connections to sql that helped my site and got it back to almost usable after the update 

Elizabeth, contact your hosting provider and request mysql query tracking info to know what queries caused this slow load

Will do and post when I have answers.