We don’t want to over-load users with too many numbers so it’s best we don’t include the last access date.
The 3/4 messages on the right in the top-level category are most recently active / popular items from all sub-categories.
Our experience is that users tend to use the Latest page coupled with New & Unread to see the latest goings on.
Categories tends to be used for finding something older coupled with search. If you visit a category and then use search you can limit the search to that category:
I think from talking to Neil at dean at the Christmas do a lot of the sub categories are going to be simplified in the future anyway due to the overly complex nature of the old site, although this requires manual moving of all of the old posts to new categories so will take time, and will definately clear things up.
Last suggestion for tonight, is it possible to open links in a new tab? (This would save using the back arrow, and would allow reading of both sites at the same time, this is useful when following members advise)
Opening links in a new tab is a personal option available from your User Preferences:
EDIT: Obviously this setting is for external links, internal links there isn’t an option for and there won’t be one sorry. You can always Ctrl + Click the links (to open behind) or Shift + Click to open in a new window though.