This is something that is linked from a CC Library?

I agree about the site speed… we’re investigating what is wrong. Sorry about that.

Here is a possible solution: instead of making the characters style a larger font size, keep the font size the same… but in Advanced Character Formats, set the Horizontal AND Vertical Scale of to something like 200%. That makes it look bigger, but doesn’t change the vertical spacing need.

Yes, if you have a text frame on the master page (whether it is a primary text frame or not), then you put text into it on the document page, it overrides the text frame. However, its position should still be linked to the master page. That is, if you move the text frame on the master page (or change its size or rotate it or change its fill or stroke colors) it should reflect that on all the document pages — even if you put text in it.

That is the way it works for me.

As for indexing: that is a very different topic! :-) There are many people asking similar things here in this forum about indexing, so definitely search for that. You’ll find references to the Indexmatic script, for example.