Show recent posts on the main page

Being able to see a full page of information is great - you don't need to click/back-click in and out of sub-forums/threads, all you do is scroll down a bit. If there are so many posts they run onto another page, that would be a bit crap. Would that happen in one day? Presumably the length of a page is variable?

As I see it, there is a bit too much information on the Latest Posts page. The username of the author of the thread is followed by '(Talk | contribs) posted a reply to', which doesn't really need to be there - or does it? There's an entry for users editing their own posts - do they really need to appear? The time of the post is followed by two stops - what are they for? Being able to see the first sentence someone has written is only useful if it's not just a quote from further up the thread! :)

The Forums page is pretty sparse at the moment. If you look at the UKB main page you have to scroll down a bit to see all the forums and sub forums, but they'll be a bit more compact on here. You're right, having loads of sub-forums would not be ideal - but having enough would help to make things manageable.

I'd like to be able to see a slightly tidier version of the current Latest Posts page plus the five most recent posts, as at the bottom of the main page on UKB - but at the top of the Latest Posts page...

EDIT - with the forum and sub-forum headings and forum how-to on the same page, rather than two separate pages:

        thread - username (the most recent poster) - time - forum x 5

        forums and sub-forums

        link to how-to page

        list of posts as in current Latest Posts

If that's all on one page you could either bookmark the main page or the forum page in your browser, depending on your priorities - and the five recent thread titles could appear on the main page. I've got the forum page on UKB in my browser rather than the main page - pretty though it is.

I'd like to see the constantly changing photo back on the main page somewhere - if it can show pictures from Flickr and elsewhere. Alan's blog looks good with a prominent photo and content lower down, and obviously UKC's new main page looks good.