Just want to bump this thread a bit It's not just about forum posts but also articles and all content released in this site. They often go completely unnoticed. I am fairly regular visitor but once in a while i notice topics that i've missed completely. I know there's "What's new" on top but it resets the tracking time when you visit it once. Sometimes "View posts from last 24 hours" is not visible at all, and honestly that is quite short time. Going through each forum sections manually is too much, maybe way too many categories aswell. Main page showing "3 most popular" articles, forum posts etc could in my opinion change to "10 latest active topics".

I use many different forums and so far best feature i have found in one phpBB kind, is "View new posts" that goes as far as 4 days back. Another custom made forum shows all categories at once with clear highlight colors on forum posts and categories that have unread posts. Both systems are built so that all the information fits easily to 1 screenful without scrolling. Reader is always on top of knowing what's happened on the site while he was gone.