> Just one question - how is "most recent" determined? The date of the first message in the thread? The last?

The "Recent Messages" page contains the last 15
messages posted to the forum. (It has fewer
than 15 messages now because fewer than 15
messages were posted since I created the page,
and the scripts aren't set up to insert old
ones. But once it gets up to 15, it'll stay at
15.) If this number turns out to be too small
(or large), it's trivial for me to adjust.